He stood there, motionless and tearless, until the sexton had finished his task, had shouldered his spade, and, still whistling, had walked away. Then he sat down upon the little mound, and hid his face in his hands. He sat there for some time--for a long, long time--and then slowly arose, and with feeble and uncertain steps retraced the way he had come, and found himself at the door of the handsome house, whence he had followed the funeral in the morning. He made his way to the lady, who happened to be still there, and who now (as I have said), indignation having yielded to compassion, was prepared to satisfy the yearning anxiety he had expressed to hear all she could tell him of his once proud and beautiful child. "You know where you are, and what I am, and what I and the other ladies whom you have seen with me employ ourselves upon when we come here." "No," he said, looking round. "It never struck me to inquire, or even to reflect upon what I saw." "This house is a kind of hospital." He started--and a faint flush passed over his face. "Yes," he said, "it was natural--as things had gone on--a consequence inevitable. Then she died at last in the hospital?" "Not exactly that--as you would interpret the word. This house is, indeed, a species of hospital; it is intended as a refuge for the sick and dying, who have nowhere else to go; but it does not exactly resemble an ordinary hospital. In the first place, the services performed are not altogether gratuitous; in the second, every patient has a room to herself. We are only women, except the medical attendants: and we admit none but women--and those women of a higher class, of gentle breeding, and refined habits, who have fallen into poverty, and yet who have not been hardened in their sensations by habits, so as that the edge of privation is blunted; or what, perhaps, is still more difficult to bear, that painful sense of publicity unfelt, which renders shelter in an ordinary hospital a source of suffering to them--which--God be thanked!--it does not necessarily prove to those for whom such places of refuge were intended. This house would have been more justly called an asylum than a hospital, for it is intended as a shelter for the sick and destitute; but yet those who are received into it are expected to contribute to their own support." He made no answer to this explanation. After all, it, interested him little now to know that his Ella had not been a mere object of the charity which is extended to paupers. His pride had died within him, for his nature had been much changed; but, only as such natures change. His faults had withered away, but no good qualities seemed as yet to burst forth to flourish in their stead. The soul had been so utterly ruined and devastated, the portion of living waters had been so completely dried up, that he seemed merely to have lost the inclination to do wrong--that was all.