A word serves to explain all. The child's nurse had carelessly set a lamp too near the curtains, and the night breeze had wafted them into the flame. The apartment of Rose opened into the nursery, and as she stood in her night-dress before her mirror, arranging her hair, she saw the flashing of the flame, and, in the one idea of saving her little sister, forgot every other. That act of self-forgetfulness was her last earthly act; a few short hours of patient suffering were all that remained to her. Peacefully as she had lived, she died, looking tenderly on her parents out of her large blue eyes, and only intent to soothe their pain. "Yes, I suffer," she said, "but only a short pain. We must all suffer something. My Father thinks a very little enough for me. I have had such a happy life, I _might_ bear just a little pain at the last." A little later her mind seemed to wander. "Mamma, mamma," she said, hurriedly, "I put the things all away; the lilac muslin and the barége. Mamma, that veil, the mourning veil, is in the drawer. Oh, mamma, that veil was for you; don't refuse it; our Father sends it, and he knows best. Perhaps you will see heaven through that veil." It is appalling to think how near to the happiest and most prosperous scene of life stands the saddest despair. All homes are haunted with awful possibilities, for whose realization no array of threatening agents is required,--no lightning, or tempest, or battle; a peaceful household lamp, a gust of perfumed evening air, a false step in a moment of gayety, a draught taken by mistake, a match overlooked or mislaid, a moment's oversight in handling a deadly weapon,--and the whole scene of life is irretrievably changed! It was but a day after the scene in the arbor, and all was mourning in the so lately happy, hospitable house; everybody looked through tears. There were subdued breathings, a low murmur, as of many listeners, a voice of prayer, and the wail of a funeral hymn,--and then the heavy tread of bearers, as, beneath the black pall, _she_ was carried over the threshold of her home, never to return. And Olivia and Albert came forth behind their dead. The folds of the dark veil seemed a refuge for the mother's sorrow. But how did the flowers of home, the familiar elms, the distant smiling prospect look through its gloomy folds,--emblem of the shadow which had fallen between her heart and life? When she looked at the dark moving hearse, she wondered that the sun still shone, that birds could sing, and that even her own flowers could be so bright. Ah, mother! the world had been just as full of sorrow the day before; the air as full of "farewells to the dying and mournings for the dead"; but thou knewest it not! Now the outer world comes to thee through the _mourning veil_!