Eve, sitting there, looked at her. Miss Sabrina was tall and slender; she had once been pretty, but now her cheeks were wan, her eyes faded, her soft brown hair was very thin. She had but a thread of a voice. "There is everlasting peace, Rest, enduring rest, in heaven," she sang in her faint, sweet tones; and when she came to the words, "There will sorrows ever cease," she raised her poor dim eyes towards the sky with such a beautiful expression of hope in them that the younger woman began to realize that there might be acute griefs even when people were so mild and acquiescent, so dimly hued and submissive, as was this meek Southern gentlewoman. The hymn finished, Miss Sabrina put her prayer-book in her pocket, and came forward. "My mother," she said, touching one of the tombs. "My grandfather and grandmother. My brother Marmaduke, Cicely's father. Cicely's mother; she was a Northerner, and we have sometimes thought Cicely rather Northern." "Oh, no!" "Well, her grandmother was from Guadeloupe. So perhaps that balances it." The older tombs were built of brick, each one covered with a heavy marble slab, upon which were inscribed, in stately old-fashioned language, and with old-fashioned arrangement of lines and capitals, the names, the virtues, and the talents of the one who lay beneath. The later graves were simple grassy mounds. "My brother Augustus; my great-uncle William Drayton; my aunt Pamela," Miss Sabrina continued, indicating each tomb as she named its occupant, much as though she were introducing them. "My own place is already selected; it is here," she went on, tapping a spot with her slender foot. "It seems to me a good place; don't you think so? And I keep an envelope, with directions for everything, on top of my collars, where any one can find it; for I do so dislike an ill-arranged funeral. For instance, I particularly desire that there should be fresh water and glasses on the hall-table, where every one can get them without asking; _so_ much better than hidden in some back room, with every one whispering and hunting about after them. I trust you don't mind my saying," she concluded, looking at Eve kindly, "that I hope you may be here." They left the cemetery together. "I suppose it was a shock to you that your niece should marry a Union officer?" Eve said, as they took the shorter path towards the house. "Ye-es, I cannot deny it; and to my father also. But we liked John for himself very much; and Cicely felt--" But John's sister did not care to hear what Cicely felt! "And was it on this island that he expected to make his fortune--in cotton?" "No; these are rice lands, and they are worthless now that the dikes are down." "And the slaves gone." "Yes. But we never had many slaves; we were never rich. Now we are very poor, my dear; I don't know that any one has mentioned it to you." "And yet you keep on all these infirm old negroes--those who would be unable to get employment anywhere else."