But why afflict you and myself by recurring to these melancholy details! Suffice it, that this dreadful blow effected what nothing else on earth could have effected in the mind of General Stanley. Humbled to the dust, even the arrival of the once despised owner of Lexley Park did not drive him from the house. He asked his pity--he asked his pardon. Beside the coffin of his daughter he expressed all the compunction a generous-hearted and broken-hearted man could express; and all he asked in return, was leave to lay her poor head in the grave of her ancestors. No one opposed his desire. The young widower had not as much consciousness left as would have enabled him to utter the negative General Stanley seemed prepared to expect; and as to his father, about to abandon Lexley for ever, to what purpose erect a family vault in a church which neither he nor his were ever likely to see again? To the chapel at Stanley Manor, accordingly, were the mother and child removed. The General wrote expressly to forbid his son-in-law and Selina returning to the Hall, on pretence of sustaining him in his affliction. He _chose_ to give way to it; he _chose_ to be alone with his despair. Never shall I forget the day that mournful funeral procession passed through the village! Young and old came forth weeping to their doors to bid her a last farewell; even as they used to come and exchange smiles with her, in those happy days when life lay before her, bright--hopeful--without a care--without a responsibility. I had intended to pay him the same respect. I meant, indeed, to have followed the hearse, at an humble distance, to its final destination. But when I rose that morning a sudden weakness came upon me, and I was unable to quit my room. I, so strong, so hardy, who have passed through life without sickness or doctor, was as powerless that day as an infant. It was from the good rector, therefore, I heard how the General (on whom, in consequence of the precarious condition of the afflicted husband, devolved the task of chief mourner) sustained his carriage to perform with dignity and propriety his duty to the dead. As he followed the coffin through the churchyard, crowded by his old pensioners--many of them praying on their knees as it passed--his step was as firm and his brow as erect as though at the head of his regiment. It was not till all was over--the mournful ceremony done, the crowd dispersed, the funeral array departed--that having descended into the vault, ere the stone was rolled to the door of the sepulchre, in order to point out the exact spot where he wished her remains to be deposited, so that hereafter his own might rest by her side, he renounced all self-restraint, and throwing himself upon the ground, gave himself up to his anguish, and refused to be comforted!