During the twelve months that elapsed after her husband's death there was a "great calm" over Gabrielle--a tranquillity, like that exhibited by an individual walking in sleep. I had expected despair and passion when her lofty spirit was thus trampled to the dust; but no, as I have said, she was strangely tranquil--strangely silent. There was no resignation--that is quite another thing; and, except when my sister listened to Mr. Dacre, she never read her Bible, or suffered me to read it to her: but his deep, full, rich voice, inexpressibly touching and sweet in all its modulations, ever won her rapt, undivided attention. She attended the church where he officiated; and though the Erminstouns had a sumptuously-decorated pew there, it was not to that the young widow resorted; she sat amid the poor in the aisle, beneath a magnificent monument of the Treherne family, where the glorious sunset rays, streaming through the illuminated window, fell full upon her clustering golden hair and downcast eyes. There was pride in this, not humility; and Gabrielle deceived herself, as, with a quiet grace peculiarly her own, she glided to her lowly seat, rejecting Lord Treherne's proffered accommodation, as he courteously stood with his pew door open, bowing to the fair creature as if she had been a queen. The five Misses Erminstoun knelt on their velvet cushions, arrayed in feathers and finery, and strong in riches and worldly advantages; but my pale sister, in her coarsely-fashioned mourning-garb, seated on a bench, and kneeling on the stone, might have been taken for the regal lady, and they her plebeian attendants.