The gaze of the clergyman as he spoke these latter words was rather bent on the daughter than the mother, and the dying woman read the thought in his heart and laid her own feeble hand upon her child’s head. The girl’s tears were dry now. Her lips had parted in a smile of wondrous vividness and hope. She clasped her hands together, and her glance sought her mother’s face. “O mother, my mother--if it might only be soon! O pray for me that I lose not heart--that I may learn to live in the hope in that promise!” “The Lord will give you help and grace so to live, my child, if you will but trust in Him. Heaven and earth may pass away, but His word will not pass away, and that hope is His most blessed promise. ‘We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.’ O my child, never think to put off the making of your peace with God till the hour of death, as some do. Remember that ‘we shall not all die.’ It is the life eternal, not the grave and gate of death, upon which our hearts must be fixed. Although I am called to pass through that gate, ask not, my child, for power to die. Ask rather the gift of the everlasting life which will be given without dying at the coming of the Lord. Ask for that coming and kingdom to be hastened, that He will come down speedily upon this rent and riven earth, and cause His reign of peace to begin. Yea, pray for the outpouring of His Spirit in this time of darkness and perplexity. Pray for that great and glorious day when mortality shall be swallowed up of life!” The Duchess had half risen upon her pillows as she spoke. A strange light was in her eyes. In spite of her physical weakness, she spoke with a power and strength that had seemed impossible a few moments before. Was it the last expiring spark, flashing out with momentary vividness; or was it some spiritual power within her that gave to her this access of strength? Those about her knew not, yet they hung upon her words with a sense of strange wonder and awe. To the Duke and the other clergyman this talk was absolutely inexplicable--like words spoken in a strange language. Deeply as the reserved and stern husband had loved his wife, there were subjects that were never spoken of between them, owing to his resolute reserve and reticence. Dry orthodoxy and an upright walk before men had been characteristic of the Duke through life. The fruits of the Spirit, showing forth in love, joy, and peace, and the yearning for light upon the dealings of God with His children, were absolutely unknown to him; and though he knelt with the rest when Mr. St. Aubyn offered a prayer beside the bed of his dying wife, the words spoken fell meaningless on his ears. He had far more sympathy with the clergyman who had called his wife a saint, and shrunk from striving to speak any words of promise, than with him who was speaking of things so far beyond his ken as to appear to him idle mysticism and folly.