“So you know that nothing has been left undone that could have been done,” she said. “And now, Clara, please go and wash your face, and please try, love, to behave just as usual, just as you have behaved, my own dear sister, all these years. Oh, it is hard, I know. Perhaps, Clara, if we kneel down together and say Our Father we shall feel better, and then let us both make up our minds to make the best of things and to go on living quite simply and ordinarily. That has seemed right to us before, and I do not see that it is not right still. There is no use in my going to be a missionary just because of this.” They said the prayer together, and when it was done Phœbe kissed her sister. “Go upstairs if you like, dear,” she said, “and have a good cry. Then when you come down again, if you will be so kind, we will just try this Amore Mysterio again. I should like to surprise Miss Avesham by playing it when she comes. I told her I did not know it this morning.” Clara stood irresolute a moment. Then she blew her nose, and wiped up her face generally. “We will try it at once,” she said, in rather a quavering voice. “I hope I shall play it better this time, Phœbe.” For the most part it is the natures of very strong vitality to whom death seems so unfaceable, and all their courage is needed to meet it. But Phœbe had never been a lusty swimmer in the waves and foam of life; she had but dabbled with her feet in it, and perhaps it was this unacquaintance with the thrill and throb of mere living which helped her to face what was before her with such simple unconcern. She had passed her life in safe and shallow waters, the buffeting and bracing risks of the world had not been her affair; and to her straightforward, if shallow and short-sighted, nature death did not seem an unnatural thing. Her grasp of life had never been firm, and the relaxation and loss of it came with no shock. Her fingers were but holding it lightly, they would come away without a struggle. But Clara’s capacity for suffering was greater. In her gentle way she raged over that hideous end to existence, and it required all her fortitude to meet that which Phœbe met without effort. She had never rebelled or struggled against the ordinary necessities of life, and of these death was one. But from that day her case grew very rapidly worse. That cruel and inexorable malady, whose only mercy is the swiftness with which it does its work, was to her very merciful, and her suffering was comparatively little. A fortnight after this she came downstairs for the last time, and, sitting once more in her corner, talked very cheerfully to Clara about Jeannie’s approaching marriage. “It will take place in the Cathedral, so Miss Avesham told me yesterday,” she said, “and Lord Avesham will give her away. I wish--” and she paused. “Yes, dear,” said Clara. “I wish I could have been there,” said Phœbe, “but I am afraid Dr. Maitland was not so cheerful this morning. Clara, love, I hope you will go.”