ye

had earned that bliss. It is a fearful, a terrible mistake, for nothing but a cheerful

resignation to your fate, and a strenuous effort to conquer your earthly sorrows, can fit ye for the Heaven about which ye rave.

CHAPTER VI.

"Gone, gone

from her cheek is the summer bloom,

And her lip has lost all its faint perfume,

And the gloss hath dropp'd from her golden hair,

And her cheek is pale, but no longer fair,

And the spirit that sat in her soft blue eye

Is struck with cold mortality;

And the smile that play'd round her lip is fled,
And every charm has now left the dead."

ANTONIO'S was a tearless, voiceless, motionless grief, and the worthy clergyman, who constantly visited him, became alarmed at the continuation of this species of stupor. No entreaties could draw him from his seat beside the bed which contained the corpse of his idolized Geraldine, and with glazed and distended eyes he watched

them placing her senseless form in the coffin, near which he then stationed himself. On the third evening from her death, as he sat gazing vacantly on the changing features of her he had so loved, and striving to recollect how this had all come to pass, the profound stillness of the chamber was interrupted by the door creaking on its hinges; Antonio raised his eyes and beheld Bianca slowly entering and approaching him. The last time he had seen the dog was sleeping on Geraldine's knees, the evening before her death; and a convulsive shudder ran through his frame, as some vague recollection of this circumstance occurred to his darkened mind. Bianca came close up to him, and finding that her mute and graceful caresses were unnoticed, she jumped up on his knee, and looked wistfully in his face. She then placed her front legs on the edge of the coffin, and with gentle fondness began to lick the cold features of her kind mistress.

At this sight, Antonio's stern grief melted to softness, and rising hastily, and throwing

himself across the senseless form of his wife, he sobbed with fearful violence, whilst the broken sentences, "am I alone-for ever-Oh God! will she not return?-My best beloved— my precious Geraldine," broke from his lips. At these sounds of agony Bianca was terrified, and whined piteously, and vainly attempted to arouse the mourner's attention by jumping on him and licking his hands.

By degrees all the circumstances attending his irreparable loss came back to the wretched man's memory, and brought with them fresh torture. But after giving a free vent to his anguish, he raised himself and went forth an altered man; a consuming and endless sorrow was in his heart, but he resolved henceforth to lock it in the inmost recesses of that withered heart, and keep it as a treasure too sacred to be profaned by the vulgar eye.

He conducted himself with perfect calmness till the day of the burial, and even then no sound escaped from his labouring breast, as he followed his lost love to the grave, and listened,

with downcast eyes and compressed lips, to the affecting service for the dead. Alone he was calm in outward seeming, though his very heart-strings were cracking—for no sooner were the beautiful and gracious words "I am the resurrection and the life," uttered, than sobs burst forth from every bosom, and the clergyman who had sincerely loved the deceased, felt his cheeks streaming with tears, and his voice grew tremulous and choked by emotion, till overcome completely, he bowed his head in his hands and wept aloud, and all wept with him save the husband of the departed.

But this moment of weakness soon passed, and the venerable minister of Christ raised his head once more, and his white locks floated on the wind as he resumed the solemn service.

And all was soon over, and even the terrible sound of the mould falling on the coffin, that sound which brings the fearful conviction with it that our lately breathing, beautiful love is indeed nothing but a lump of cold clay; even that sound brought no tears to Antonio's relief