And it was gone! She went into the lumber-room, and picked it out from under a pile of old prints and shabbily framed certificates for prize cattle. With a sad heart Aspatria regarded the other changes. Her little tent-bed, with its white dimity curtains, had been given to baby's nurse. The vase her father had bought her at Kendal fair was broken. Her small mirror and dressing-table had been removed for a fine Psyche in a gilded frame. Nothing, nothing was untouched, but the big dower-chest into which she had flung her wretched wedding-clothes. She stood silently before it, reflecting, with excusable ill-nature, that neither Will nor Alice knew the secret of its spring. Her mother had taught it to her, and that bit of knowledge she determined to keep to herself. After some hesitation she tried the spring: it answered her pressure at once; the lid flew back, and there lay the unhappy white satin dress, the wreath, and veil, and slippers, just as she had tumbled them in. The bitter hour came sharply back to her; she thought and gazed, and thought and gazed, until she felt herself to be weeping. Then she softly closed the lid, and, as she did so, a smile parted her lips,--a smile that denied all that her tears said; a smile of hope, of good presage, of coming happiness. She stayed only a week at Seat-Ambar, though she had originally intended to remain until the harvest was over. The time was spent in public festivity; every one in Allerdale was invited to give her a fitting welcome. But the very formality of all this entertainment pained her. It was, after all, only a cruel evidence that Will and Alice did not care to take her into their real home-life. She would rather have sat alone with them, and talked of their hopes and plans, and been permitted to make friends of the babies. So far away, so far away as she had drifted in three years from the absent living! Would the dead be kinder? She went to Aspatria Church and sat down in her mother's seat, and let the strange spiritual atmosphere which hovers in old churches fill her heart with its supernatural influence. All around her were the graves of her fore-elders, strong elemental men, simple God-loving women. Did they know her? Did they care for her? Her soul looked with piteous entreaty into the void behind it, but there was no answer; only that dreadful silence of the dead, which presses upon the drum of the ear like thunder. She went into the quiet yard around the church. The ancient, ancient sun shone on the young grass. Over her mother's grave the sweet thyme had grown luxuriantly. She rubbed her hands in it, and spread them toward heaven with a prayer. Then peace came into her heart, and she felt as if eyes, unseen heavenly eyes, rained happy influence upon her. Thus it is that death imparts to life its most intense interest; for, kneeling in his very presence, Aspatria forgot the mortality of her parents, and did reverence to that within them which was eternal.