They told her over and over again, first one and then the other; she seemed never tired of listening. For the first time in many, many days her white lips fell into the gracious curves they used to know so well. She was smiling--smiling for sheer happiness. She was hurt to death, she knew that; something whispered it in her glad ears as distinctly as though the good God had bent from his great heavens himself to tell her so; and she knew--ah! she knew--that her God had forgiven her. Death had brought her two gifts so sweet in his chill arms that his embrace scarcely frightened her. As they carried her with slow carefulness up the front steps and into the wide hall an innocent fancy seized her; she would like so much to die in Mr. Jack’s room--on his little iron bed. There couldn’t be any harm, could there? She looked so wistfully up into the face of little Hicks that he felt she wanted something, and asked her what it was. “Kyar me into Mr. Jack’s room,” she whispered. “It’s--it’s nearer the ground.” The pretty subterfuge was also a very good one. It would have been almost mortal anguish to her, had they sought to bear her poor wrecked body up that winding stair-way. So into “Mr. Jack’s room” they carried her, and placed her full gently on his forsaken bed. Aunt Tishy came hurrying with inarticulate cries. They hushed her as best they might, telling her that any disturbance might kill the girl. Then little Hicks mounted one of Roden’s best horses and dashed off in search of a surgeon. Virginia lay quiet and quite content, staring with wide-open eyes at the well-known objects in the airy room. Another delightful fancy seized upon her. Ah! it was good to lie there and die, and pretend that she had been his wife, and that it was her right to die in there with all those much-loved manly kickshaws about her: the Scotch deer-stalker’s cap, which hung on one of the sconces of a little mirror over the mantle; that heap of glittering spurs on a table near at hand; his whip; his boots; an old blue flannel shirt on the bed’s foot. She had not allowed any one to enter his room since he left for Windemere, nor had she herself been in it. And even if he didn’t forgive her, she saved Bonnibel. Suddenly there came upon her an awful, crashing agony. “Mammy! mammy!” she called, in her childhood’s voice. She clung to her old nurse with might and main. “Oh, mammy, mammy, I’m payin’ fur it! Yuh don’ know, but I’m payin’ fur it. I’m so glad--I’m so glad! Mammy, sing me ’bout ’though yo’ sins be as scarlet’--sing! sing!” The old negress, as well as she could for sobbing, sang to her in such words as these: “’Tis de old ship o’ Zion, Come to take us all ho-ome-- Glory, glory, hallelujah! ’Tis de old ship o’ Zion, Come to take us all home-- Glory, glory, hallelujah!”