"Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him."
On the margin opposite this verse was written in a girlish hand:
"Think of me as there when you read this, and do not be sorry."
A lock of soft, golden hair, which might have been cut from a baby's head, and a few faded flowers were tied with a bit of thread, and lying between the leaves. And except that the book was full of marked passages, chiefly comforting and consolatory, there was nothing more to indicate the character of the owner.
"If this Bible were hers, she was a good woman," Mr. St. Claire said, laying his hand reverently upon the forehead of the dead, while Frank, who saw another meaning between the lines, shook like one in an ague fit, for he did not believe that those hands, so pulseless and cold, had ever traced the words "Think of me as there when you read this and do not be sorry." She who wrote them might be and probably was dead, but her grave was far away, and the fact did not at all change the duty which he owed to her and him for whom the message was intended.
"What shall I say to Arthur, and how shall I tell him," he was wondering to himself, when Mr. St. Claire roused him by saying:
"You seem greatly unstrung by what has happened. I never saw you look so ill."
"Yes, I feel as if I had murdered her by not sending John to the station," Frank stammered, glad to offer this as an excuse for his manner, which he knew was strange and unnatural.
"You are too sensitive altogether. John might not have seen her, she hurried off so fast, and you had no particular reason to think she was coming here," Mr. St. Claire said, adding: "We'd better leave her now. We can do nothing more until the coroner comes, which will hardly be to-day. I hear the roads are all blocked and impassable. Let everything remain in the trunk where he can see them."
Mechanically Mrs. Tracy, who was present, put the different articles into the trunk, leaving the Bible on the top, and then followed her husband from the room. She knew there was more affecting him than the fact that a dead woman was in the house, or that he had not sent John to the station. But what it was she could not guess, unless, and she, too, felt faint and giddy for a moment as a new idea entered her head.