I was not then aware that there is a love beyond that which I then felt—a love, compared with which, a father’s, though it may be as enduring, must be more cold. We laid her in the still, still grave. We mingled our tears together, and returned to the house, now solitary to us both. We said not a word of future plans. We made no arrangements. We dealt with no business. The life and the love that was gone, was a bond between us, which seemed both to him and me, unseverable. At first, I gave way to my grief—sat in the little room that had been hers. Wept by the side of the bed where she had lain in my arms, and in the arms of death, and writhed under the first great disappointment of my earthly hopes. Oh, how sweet, how beautiful, how pleasant was her memory, and how bitter, how terrible the thought that I could never hold her to my heart again. For two days I was brutally selfish—I thought only of myself, and of my sad, sad loss. In the last week, I had learned to love her more than I ever loved her before. It seemed, indeed, as if we had become one, and that my heart lay dead with hers in the cold earth. I was roused from this sort of stupor by the old woman-servant coming in as I sat there, and saying in her simple way— “Ah! sir, it is very sad, indeed, for you, but there is one who has a sadder fate than yours. In heaven’s name, shake off your sorrow, and go and see him. You are young, and he is old. You have long years, and, perhaps, bright days before you. He has nothing but darkness and solitude between him and the grave. You have lost one whom you loved well, but you have time, perhaps, to love again. But he has lost the only one, and can love no more. Go and see him, sir. Go and see him; for her whole heart was in you, and he will think that his child’s spirit comes back to visit him with her husband. He has not broken bread,” she added, “since we laid her on that bed, and there is no sorrow, like an old man’s sorrow for the death of his only one.” I took the good creature’s hands in mine, and wrung them hard, though I could not speak, and went forth to seek the bereaved father. I found him in his old room, with half-a-dozen books at his feet—tried, and thrown down upon the floor. All his activity was gone. He was quiet and still enough now; but when he saw me, he started up, and we ran into each other’s arms, as father and son, weeping very bitterly. We never mentioned her name, and I do not recollect that, during the whole fortnight I remained there, he ever alluded to her except upon one occasion, and that was, when we were on the eve of parting.