The shadow was over him, and so little changed was his expression that the colourlessness and distortion of death seemed to have hardly touched him; he had always been pale. Selina smiled. Others entered the chamber and passed round the bed. Miss Chressham stood behind Selina, who leant forward, and both looked at Rose Lyndwood with tearless eyes. Neither touched him nor even the edge of his garments, neither dropped a flower on his couch nor spoke one word of anguish, nor sighed once in lamentation. After a little while they moved and left the room, their hands clasped and their lips closed. A smile lay, like a ghost of former happiness, on Selina's face; she seemed to see nothing, to hear nothing; her soul was listening to distant music, and treading different ways. They left the square on foot; neither looked back on the shuttered windows of Lyndwood House. Selina spoke, and her pure voice was steady. "Now I will go home; we return to Bristol to-morrow." She added where they were staying, and remarked on her father's grief and patience. "He will be waiting for me," she added, and spoke of the life that was before her: peace and yet not loneliness, quiet but not desolation. "It is all over," she said, and kissed Susannah. They walked together in silence until they came to the Strand and saw the river flash in the evening sun between the houses. "Did any tell you," asked Miss Chressham then, "what he said: 'I always believed in the immortality of the soul'?" "I did not know," answered Selina. "It was a strange thing to say." "A strange thing for him to believe," said Susannah. "But I am glad, are not you?" "Yes, I am glad." They had reached her inn. "Good-bye; will you write to me?" "Good-bye, sweet; it hath gone beyond words, hath it not?" "Beyond everything," said Selina. "I think it hath passed earth and reached heaven." They clung together, kissed and parted. Miss Chressham took a hackney and drove home. Everything was as she had left it; the tea service stood about, my lady lay heavily asleep in the darkened bedchamber; only the bar of sunlight had shifted and deepened its golden hue. "Oh, Rose! Rose!" She took off her hat and mantle and flung herself on the worn sofa, hiding her face in her white arms and dark dress. Selina thought that he loved her; she had that to comfort her, but what was to console Susannah? "Ah, Rose! Rose!" My lady could sleep--Selina could take up her life saying, "It is over----" "But what for me?" cried Susannah Chressham through her clenched fingers. The door opened softly. She lifted dazed eyes and dropped her hands to her lap. It was Marius Lyndwood who entered--Marius, plainly dressed and dusty, pale and weary-looking, of an infinitely quieter and older aspect than formerly. They looked at each other, and she rose. "I am glad you have come," she said simply. "Susannah!" Her eyes widened; he knew, he was the one person in all the world who knew.