But she would trouble him no more. All he could do for her now was to give her a burial, and for Edith’s sake that burial should be as perfect in its appointments as if the dead had been his own mother, whom twenty carriages had followed out to Greenwood. There were almost as many as that drawn up before the house on Schuyler Hill on the day of the funeral, for far and near the people knew of the cloud hanging over that household; of the aged mother just arrived from England, and dead before she had even seen her daughter’s handsome home; of the little grave in the cemetery, made there too soon, and of the chamber where Edith lay, raving in mad delirium, and tearing her hair until they tied her hands to keep them from further mischief. And so they came from every quarter and filled the house to overflowing, save the south wing, where Edith was; that was bolted against them, and the murmur of the gathering multitude did not penetrate there enough to awaken the slightest interest in Edith. Only a very few beside myself were permitted to see the dead woman, lying so still in the costly casket which the colonel had ordered from New York, and to us, who looked upon her, there came no suspicion that we had ever seen that face before. It was very calm and peaceful in its last sleep, and many said, “She must have been fine-looking when in health,” while in every heart there was a profound pity for the stranger who had died so soon in a foreign land, and for whom there was no mourner at the grand funeral, except Gertie. During the services the colonel left Edith long enough to come down to the parlor and listen while the prayers were said and the hymns were sung; then he went back to Edith, and strangers did the rest, making the funeral seem so sad and lonely without a blood relation except little Arthur, whose shoulder-knots and sash were black, and whom Gertie led by the hand when she went out to the Schuyler carriage, which was to take her to the grave as first and only mourner.