"I saw that old gardener of ours that died at the rectory, papa. I was frightened at him; a frightful old yellow scarecrow he looked. Henry Arkell won't look like that. Papa, I wish those wicked college boys who were his enemies could be hung!" "Do you, Georgina?" gravely returned the dean. "_He_ did not wish it; he forgave and prayed for them." "They were so very----" She could not finish the sentence. The reference to the schoolboys brought too vividly the past before her, and she rushed away to her own room, bursting with the tears she had to suppress until she got there. It seemed that her whole heart must burst with grief, too, as she stood in the presence of the corpse. She had asked St. John to go with her; and the two were alone in the room. Save for the ashy paleness, Henry looked just as beautiful as he had been in life: the marble lids were closed over the brilliant eyes, never to open again in this life; the once warm hands lay cold and useless now. Some one--perhaps his mother--had placed in one of the hands a sprig of pink hyacinth; some was also strewed on the breast of the flannel shroud. The perfume came all-powerfully to their senses; and never afterwards did Georgina Beauclerc come near the scent of that flower, death-like enough in itself, but it brought all-forcibly to her memory the death-chamber of Henry Arkell. She stood, leaning over the side of the coffin, sobbing painfully. The trestles were very low, so that it was much beneath her as she stood. St. John stood opposite, still and calm. "He loved you very much, Georgina--as few can love in this world. You best know how you requited him." Perhaps it was a harsh word to say in the midst of her grief; but St. John could not forgive her for the past, whatever Henry had done. She bent her brow down on the coffin, and sobbed wildly. "Still, you made the sunshine of his life. He would have lived it over again, if he could, because you had been in it. You had become part of his very being; his whole heart was bound up in you. Better, therefore, that he should be lying there, than have lived on to the future, to the pain that it must, of necessity, have brought." "Don't!" she wailed, amid her choking sobs. Not another word was spoken. When she grew calm, Mr. St. John quitted the room to descend--for she motioned to him to pass out first. Then--alone--she bent down her lips to the face that could no longer respond; and she felt, in the moment's emotion, as if her heart must break. "Oh! Henry--my darling! I was very cruel to you! Forgive--forgive me! But I did love you--though not as I love _him_."