I felt an almost motherly sense of protection and tenderness towards
his forlorn old age; but my English shyness was at the moment
distressed at the sense of all the servants staring at such a
meeting, and I cried out: 'Oh, sir! you should not have come thus.'
'What can I do, but show all honour to the heroic wife of my dear
child?' sobbed he; and, indeed, I found afterwards that my
persistence in bringing home my dearest to the tombs of his
forefathers had won for me boundless gratitude and honour. They took
the hearse to the church of the convent at Bellaise, where its
precious burthen was to rest. The obsequies, requiem, and funeral
mass were to take place the next day, and in the meantime I
accompanied the Marquis to the chateau, and we spent the evening and
great part of the night in talking of him whom we had both loved so
dearly, and in weeping together.

Then came the solemn and mournful day of the funeral. I was taken
early to the convent, where, among the nuns behind the grille, I
might assist at these last rites.

Thickly veiled, I looked at no one except that I curtsied my thanks
to the Abbess before kneeling down by the grating looking into the
choir. My grief had always been too deep for tears, and on that day
I was blessed in a certain exaltation of thoughts which bore me
onward amid the sweet chants to follow my Philippe, my brave, pure-
hearted, loving warrior, onto his rest in Paradise, and to think of
the worship that he was sharing there.

So I knelt quite still, but by and by I was sensible of a terrible
paroxysm of weeping from some one close to me. I could scarcely see
more than a black form when I glanced round, but it seemed to me that