One afternoon, a few days after Mrs. Cumberland had been interred, Ellen went to see her grave. Madam, Miss Dallory, Matilda, and Sir Nash had gone out driving: Arthur had been away somewhere since the morning, Mr. North was busy at the celery-bed with his head gardener. There was only Ellen: she was alone and lonely, and she put her things on and walked through Dallory to the churchyard. She happened to meet three or four people she knew, and stayed to talk to them. Mrs. Gass was one; the widow of Henry Hepburn was another. But she made way at last, feeling a little shy at being out alone. When walking as far as Dallory Mrs. Cumberland had always caused a servant to attend her. The grave was not far from Bessy Rane's. Ellen had no difficulty in distinguishing the one from the other, though as yet there was no stone to mark either. Mrs. Cumberland's was near that of the late Thomas Gass; Bessy's was close to Edmund North's. A large winter tree, an evergreen, overshadowed this corner of the churchyard, and she sat down on the bench that encircled the trunk. Bessy's grave was only a very few yards away. She leaned her face on her hand, and was still. The past, the present, the future; Mrs. Cumberland, Bessy Rane, Edmund North; her own bitter trouble, and other things--all seemed to be crowding together tumultuously in her brain. But, as she sat on, the tumult cleared a little, and she lost herself in imaginative thoughts of that heaven where pain and care shall be no more. Could they see her? Could Mrs. Cumberland look down and see her, Ellen Adair, sitting there in her sorrow? A fanciful idea came to her that perhaps the dead were the guardian angels appointed to watch the living: to be "in charge over them, to keep them in all their ways." If so, who then was watching _her?_--It must be her own mother, Mary Adair. Could these guardian angels pray for them?--intercede with the mighty God and the Saviour that their sins here might be blotted out? How long Ellen was lost in these thoughts she never knew: but she wound up by crying quietly to herself, and she wondered how long it would be before she joined them all in heaven. Some one, approaching from behind the tree, came round with a slow step and sat down on the bench. It was a gentleman in mourning; she could see so much, though he was almost on the other side of the tree, and had his back to her. Ellen found she had not been observed, and prepared to leave. Twilight had fallen on the dull evening. As she stooped to pick up her handkerchief, which had fallen, the intruder turned and saw her. Saw as well the tears on her face. It was Captain Bohun. He got up more quickly than he had sat down, intending no doubt to move away. But in his haste he dropped the stick that he had used for support in walking since his illness--and it fell close to Ellen's feet. She stooped in some confusion to pick it up, and so did he.