Oliver, with his heart standing still, took one step towards the door of another room which was kept closed. An elderly woman turned the key in the lock and let him go in. Alas! yes; there lay all that was mortal of ’Mily, the poor mangled body decently composed, covered over and put away from fascinated, appalled gaze, or rude, gloating scrutiny—in the very dress she had so often pictured herself as wearing, that she had bidden Oliver notice particularly, which she had, not three hours before, gone to church in. The chubby face was little altered, except for the closed eyes, since it had been spared, while death must have proved instantaneous. With no friend by her side, not missed, though she was in her bridal glory, till Oliver sought her out, the disastrous end of ’Mily’s foolish young life had indeed come swiftly. In the grief and oppression with which Oliver set about making the necessary arrangements, he could yet believe that, as ’Mily had said of Fan’s fate, so her own might have been more miserable still. It was a wise choice made by the warrior and poet king—rather to fall into God’s than into man’s hands. To die in an instant, though it were on her marriage morning, in her bridal finery, when her heart was softened in the act of quitting Friarton, thinking as she thought in all probability—with regretful tenderness of her mother and family, and repenting of her misconduct, while, at the same time, all faith and hope in her husband had not been crushed out of her, was surely better than to live on at the mercy of a man like Birt, to be dragged down by him into lower and lower depths, to risk becoming at last as heartless and worthless as himself. Oliver had a worse ordeal to face before night than that of seeking out ’Mily on her marriage day, as the woman killed in the railway accident. Mrs. Polley sent over an express to Friarton Mill to bid Mr. Constable come into the town and speak to her. In other circumstances it would have been an exacting, unreasonable demand; as it was Oliver, like any man with a true man’s heart, obeyed it as he would have obeyed the behest of the Queen.