Softly he stepped across the floor to make known to her his arrival. He knew she was expecting him about this time, therefore no fear of startling her too much by his sudden appearance presented itself to his mind--no fear indeed! He listened. All was still--only a slight breeze through the window, (he vaguely wondered that it was open at this hour though the night indeed was close and still), faintly rustled the canopy of the bed and flared the waxen tapers standing on the table. If his mother were there, she undoubtedly slept. He glanced around the room before advancing further to ascertain the fact, and was struck by the cold and unnatural order pervading the apartment. It was the sign which first chilled his blood and impressed him with a vague but horrible dread. Yet he stood no longer; with a firm though somewhat quickened step he approached, laid his hand upon the drapery, which was slightly drawn round the head of the bed, and beheld his mother. She slept indeed--how fast, how well, one look alone sufficed to reveal! But Eustace's eye turned not from the gaze which had first fixed itself upon that marble brow. "He gazed--how long we gaze in spite of pain, And know, but dare not own, we gaze in vain. In life itself she was so still and fair, That death with gentler aspect withered there." The long faded beauty of her youth seemed to have returned to Mrs. Trevor's countenance, as there in "the rapture of repose," she lay. Yet the son's eye became glazed in its intensity, as if the sight was one of horror and fearfulness, whilst the hue of the cold sleeper's cheek, was life, and health, and beauty, compared with that which settled on his face. A female servant of the establishment came and found him still standing thus. The woman's startled alarm at first was great. To behold that tall statue-like figure in the chamber she had left, deserted by all living. But any weak demonstration of her fear was awed into reason and collectiveness, by the recognition of her dead mistress' son, who at length, as she stood transfixed in her first paroxism of terror to the spot, turned his face towards her, revealing a countenance on which no passionate emotion, no strong grief, nothing but a stern, fearful composure, was visible, and demanded in a low, hollow voice: "When did she die?" "This morning at nine o'clock," the woman answered, weeping. "It was enough--she died; what reck'd it how?" Eustace waved his hand in sign for her to depart. She obeyed immediately, closing the door instinctively behind her; seeming at once to feel and understand that he who had most right to command, within that chamber, had arrived.