“Oh God! oh God!” said she, “our idol is gone—is gone!”
“Gone!” exclaimed the old man; “now, oh Lord, surely—surely the father’s grief may be allowed,” and he burst, as he spoke, into a paroxysm of uncontrollable sorrow.
“And what am I to do—who am—oh woe—woe—who was her mother?”
To the scene that ensued, what pen could do justice—we cannot, and consequently leave it to the imagination of our readers, whose indulgence we crave for our many failures and errors in the conduct of this melancholy story.
Thus passed the latter days of the unhappy Jane Sinclair, of whose life nothing more appropriate need be said, than that which she herself uttered immediately before her death:
“Let my fate be a warning to young creatures like myself, never to suffer their affection for any object to overmaster their sense and their reason. I cherished the passion of my heart too much, when I ought to have checked and restrained it—and now, what is the consequence? Why, that I go down in the very flower of my youth to an early grave.”
On the day after her dissolution, an incident occurred, which threw the whole family into renewed sorrow:—Early that morning, Ariel, her dove, was found dead upon her bosom, as she lay out in the composure of death.
“Remove it not,” said her father; “it shall be buried with her;” and it was accordingly placed upon her bosom in the coffin.
Seldom was a larger funeral train seen, than that which attended her remains to the grave-yard; and rarely was sorrow so deeply felt for any being so young and so unhappy, as that which moved all hearts for the fate of the beautiful but unfortunate Jane Sinclair—the far-famed Fawn of Springvale.
One other fact we have to record: Jane’s funeral had arrived but a few minutes at the grave, when another funeral train appeared slowly approaching the place of death. It was that of Charles Osborne!