"And now I will be another; only let me try to take his place." She put her arms round his neck and nestled close to him, till the old man felt, as it were, the warmth of a new life creep into his breast from the beating of the pure young heart beside him. He pressed her fondly to him; it was so long since any one had seemed to consider him as a being for whom it was possible to feel the least affection, that her gentle words were strangely soothing to him. Suddenly she started in his arms, for the door was closed with great violence; it was Lady Randolph, who had left the room, and she wondered at the strange gleam of pleasure which lit up the livid face of her uncle. Unconsciously she shrunk from him as from something evil; but little indeed could that innocent mind conceive of the feeling which made him exalt in having thus drawn forth an indication of jealous anger from the wife who so long had crushed him with her cold contempt. Lilias remained with her uncle, and told him the brief history of her untroubled life; all things connected with her seemed gentle, pure, and happy, even where images of death forced their way amongst them. He listened as to some melodious poem, whilst she told him of her mother, the sweet Irish girl, who had lured his brother Edward, in early youth, from all the grandeur of Randolph Abbey, to come and dwell with her among the Connaught hills; and how, as Lilias had heard from her old nurse, they had been the fairest couple ever seen, living for one another only, and thinking earth a paradise, because they walked upon it hand in hand. "And then, dear uncle," continued Lilias, "it seemed as though they feared that time or change should make them less beloved one to another; or since that could never be, that any evil should rise up to separate them even for one day; and so they went and lay down side by side in the green churchyard, where none could seek them out, to trouble the silent love they knew would live beyond the grave. My father died the first, and my mother laid her head upon his heart, when it ceased to beat, and never lifted it again; and so they buried them just as they were, and she lies there still, most sweetly sleeping. She said, just before she expired, that his heart had been her resting-place in life, and should be so in death; and so it was, and is even yet, a blessed rest.--Is it not, dear uncle?" He almost crushed her hand in his, and said, "Tell me no more of them, Lilias, I cannot bear it;" he was thinking how the proud feet of his disdainful wife would spurn the turf from his unhappy grave.