We have told the tale exactly as it occurred; the reader knows both plot and conclusion: and now there only remains to say something of the ways of human sorrow, and something, too, of the ways of human goodness.
Grief falls differently on different hearts; some must vent it, others can not. The coldest will be the most unnerved, the tenderest the most possessed; there is no rule. As for this poor lady, hers was of that sudden and extreme kind for which insensibility is at first mercifully provided; and it came to her, and yet not entirely--suspending the sufferings of the mind, but not deadening all the sensation of the body; for she shivered and shuddered with that bloodless cold which kept her pale, numb, and icy, like one in the last hours before death. A large fire was lighted, warm blankets were wrapped round her, but the cold was too deep to be reached; and the kind efforts made to restore animation were more a relief to her attendants than to her. And yet Miss Campbell stopped sometimes from the chafing of the hands, and let those blue fingers lie motionless in hers, and looked up at that wan face with an expression as if she wished that the eyes might never open again, but that death might at once restore what it had just taken. For some hours no change ensued, and then it was gradual; the hands were withdrawn from those that held them, and first laid, and then clenched together; deep sighs of returning breath and returning knowledge broke from her; the wrappers were thrown off, first feebly, and then restlessly. There were no dramatic startings, no abrupt questionings; but, as blood came back to the veins, anguish came back to the heart. All the signs of excessive mental oppression now began, a sad train as they are, one extreme leading to the other. Before, there had been the powerlessness of exertion, now, there was the powerlessness of control; before she had been benumbed by insensibility, now, she was impelled as if bereft of sense. Like one distracted with intense bodily pain, her whole frame seemed strained to endure. The gentlest of voices whispered comfort, she heard not; the kindest of arms supported her, she rested not. There was the unvarying moan, the weary pacing, the repetition of the same action, the measurement of the same distance, the body vibrating as a mere machine to the restless recurrence of the same thought.