She sat in that room stricken into dumbness by the shock of this sudden calamity. Time passed. The awful news flashed through the house. The servants heard it, and came silent and awe-struck to the room; but when they saw the white face, and the mourner by the bedside, they stood still, nor did they dare to cross the threshold. Suddenly, while the little group of servants stood there in that doorway, with the reverence which is always felt for death and for sorrow, there came one who forced her way through them and passed into the room. This one bore on her face the expression of a mightier grief than that which could be felt by any others--a grief unspeakable--beyond words, and beyond thought. White-haired, and with a face which now seemed turned to stone in the fixedness of its great agony, this figure tottered rather than walked into the room. There was no longer any self-restraint in this woman, who for years had lived under a self-restraint that never relaxed; there was no thought as to those who might see or hear; there was nothing but the utter abandonment of perfect grief--of grief which had reached its height and could know nothing more; there was nothing less than despair itself--that despair which arises when all is lost--as this woman flung herself past Zillah, as though she had a grief superior to Zillah's, and a right to pass even her in the terrible precedence of sorrow. It was thus that Mrs. Hart came before the presence of the dead and flung herself upon the inanimate corpse, and wound her thin arms around that clay from which the soul had departed, and pressed her wan lips upon the cold brow from which the immortal dweller had passed away to its immortality. In the depths of her own grief Zillah was roused by a cry which expressed a deeper grief than hers--a cry of agony--a cry of despair: "Oh, my God! Oh, God of mercy! Dead! What? dead! Dead--and no explanation--no forgiveness!" And Mrs. Hart fell down lifeless over the form of the dead. Zillah rose with a wonder in her soul which alleviated the sorrow of bereavement. What was this? What did it mean? "Explanation!" "Forgiveness!" What words were these? His housekeeper!--could she be any thing else? What had she done which required this lamentation? What was the Earl to her, that his death should cause such despair? But amidst such thoughts Zillah was still considerate about this stricken one, and she called the servants, and they bore her away to her own room. This grief, from whatever cause it may have arisen, was too much for Mrs. Hart. Before this she had been prostrated. She now lost all consciousness, and lay in a stupor from which she could not be aroused.