"Hush! hush!" she panted, laying her hand upon his lips to stay the incautious words. "It were cruel of me to exact such a promise from you: and it would be useless for you to make it, for you would never keep it, save with self-upbraiding. The remembrance of this scene will pass away; the remembrance of me will pass; and then you will ask yourself why should your life be condemned to solitude. No, no. To remain faithful to the dead is not in man's nature." He thought in his own heart, honestly thought it then, that her opinion was a mistaken one, and he marvelled that she should so speak. He felt as sure as he could feel of anything in this world, that he should prove a living refutation of it. Dying though she was, partially oblivious already to earth and earth's interests, she yet saw clearer into human nature than he. "Yet oh, forget me not wholly!" she whispered. "Let there be brief moments when the remembrance of me shall return to you; when you will dwell upon me as having been the one you once best loved on earth!" Another deep silence from words, for he could not answer: his sobs were choking him; the pulses of his anguished heart were beating wildly. _She_ spoke not from exhaustion; and several minutes passed on. "What will you have, him named?" he asked abruptly, pointing towards the cradle. "Call him Benjamin," she replied, after a minute's thought, and she spoke now with difficulty. "He cost Rachel her life, as this child has cost mine. And oh, may he be to you the solace that Benjamin was to old Jacob; and may you love and cherish this child as he did his!" Her voice gradually failed her, a spasm smote her features, and she lay more heavily on the pillow. Her husband raised her: he clasped her fluttering heart to his; he wildly kissed her pallid face. But that face was losing its look of consciousness, and no tenderness could arrest the departing spirit. In a paroxysm of alarm: as if, now that the moment had come, it took him by surprise, a thing that had not been looked for: he cried out to the medical man in the adjoining chamber. Mr. Pym came in, followed by the nurse. He gave one glance at the bed, and then whispered the woman to summon the physicians. He knew their presence would be utterly useless, but at such times man deems it well to fulfil these outward forms. They hastened up the stairs. They remained but a few minutes in the room, and then left it; soon left the house. The better part of that lovely lady had quitted it before they did. And it was only the previous day that the joy-bells had rung out in the adjacent village on account of the birth! Only this same morning that the local newspaper, wet from the press, had given forth the festal news to the world! "On the 10th inst., at Alnwick Hall, the wife of George Carleton St. John, Esquire, of a son and heir."