"How could I ever behave to you as I did?" sobbed Elizabeth.
And after this, and when they had settled down, John left the cousins by themselves, under the pretence of looking after the chaise and its driver, for he could see that he had done all that was needed.
"He is so good—so good to me, and to everybody!" cried Sarah, as the door was shut upon Elizabeth and herself: and then the payments and debts and returns of affection, which are so hard to reckon, welled up from both their softened hearts; and there was no more said, on either side, about the past unhappy alienation.
An hour later, and when dear Helen's interview with her father was over, and John and Sarah had stood for a little while by Walter's bedside, it was agreed that Helen—who would not leave her father, she said—should remain under the protection of Aunt Elizabeth, while John and Sarah went to the Manor House, where, as a matter of course, they were expected. And the power of kindness so wrought even upon the hard and not very impressible nature of Mrs. George Wilson, that she felt herself softening under it to the heart-stricken Helen, and agreed that, as long as was needed, she should share with Elizabeth the little bedchamber which for the last few days she had nominally occupied while nursing her brother.
It was not long needed. On the day week from Walter's fainting fit in the holly arbour, he gently sank into that slumber from which there is no awakening. One hand, damp with the dews of death, was laid on the head of his kneeling, weeping daughter, and the other feebly clasped those of his first love and her husband.
And then, as twilight deepened, a solemn silence fell upon all assembled there. Walter was dead.
Later that evening, the last offices to the poor mortal and corruptible body having been performed, came the village carpenter; and all that night, till early morning, in the stillness of the village, was heard from the dimly-lighted-up carpenter's shop, the sharp sound of saw, and hammer, and nails on stout elm boards, which told of another claimant for a resting-place in God's Acre.
On the following evening, the laden coffin was quietly, and without much observation, conveyed from High Beech to the old farmhouse in the valley, and there, in the chamber where he had first drawn breath, was deposited, until the day to be appointed for the funeral, all that was left of the first-born of old Matthew Wilson.
Meanwhile Helen, submitting herself to the loving care and sympathy of her friend and protectress, Mrs. Tincroft, had been received at the Manor House with genuine kindness and all delicate attentions by Richard Grigson and his motherly housekeeper.
