answered, impatiently, that he cared not.
Adolph and Rosa had arranged the chamber; volatile, fickle and childish, as they generally were, they were soft-hearted and full of feeling; and, while Miss Ophelia presided over the general details of order and neatness, it was their hands that added those soft, poetic touches to the arrangements, that took from the death-room the grim and ghastly air which too often marks a New England funeral.
There were still flowers on the shelves,-all white, delicate and fragrant, with graceful, drooping leaves. Eva's little table, covered with white, bore on it her favorite vase, with a single white moss rose-bud in it. The folds of the drapery, the fall of the curtains, had been arranged and rearranged, by Adolph and Rosa, with that nicety of eye which characterizes their race. Even now, while St. Clare stood there thinking, little Rosa tripped softly into the chamber with a basket of white flowers. She stepped back when she saw St. Clare, and stopped respectfully; but, seeing that he did not observe her, she came forward to place them around the dead. St. Clare saw her as in a dream, while she placed in the small hands a fair cape jessamine, and, with admirable taste, disposed other flowers around the couch.
The door opened again, and Topsy, her eyes swelled with crying, appeared, holding something under her apron. Rosa made a quick forbidding gesture; but she took a step into the room.
'You must go out,' said Rosa, in a sharp, positive whisper; '
'O, do let me! I brought a flower,-such a pretty one!' said Topsy, holding up a half-blown tea rose-bud. 'Do let me put just one there.'
'Get along!' said Rosa, more decidedly.
'Let her stay!' said St. Clare, suddenly stamping his foot. 'She shall come.'
Rosa suddenly retreated, and Topsy came forward and laid her offering at the feet of the corpse; then suddenly, with a wild and bitter cry, she threw herself on the floor alongside the bed, and wept, and moaned aloud.
Miss Ophelia hastened into the room, and tried to raise and silence her; but in vain.
'O, Miss Eva! oh, Miss Eva! I wish I 's dead, too,-I do!'
There was a piercing wildness in the cry; the blood flushed into St. Clare's white, marble-like face, and the first tears he had shed since Eva died stood in his eyes.
'Get up, child,' said Miss Ophelia, in a softened voice; 'don't cry so. Miss Eva is gone to heaven; she is an angel.'
'But I can't see her!' said Topsy. 'I never shall see her!' and she sobbed again.
They all stood a moment in silence.
'
'That's true enough' said St. Clare; 'but do,' he said to Miss Ophelia, 'see if you can't comfort the poor creature.'
'I jist wish I hadn't never been born,' said Topsy. 'I didn't want to be born, no ways; and I don't see no use on 't.'
Miss Ophelia raised her gently, but firmly, and took her from the room; but, as she did so, some tears fell from her eyes.
'Topsy, you poor child,' she said, as she led her into her room, 'don't give up!
Miss Ophelia's voice was more than her words, and more than that were the honest tears that fell down her face. From that hour, she acquired an influence over the mind of the destitute child that she never lost.
'O, my Eva, whose little hour on earth did so much of good,' thought St. Clare, 'what account have I to give for my long years?'
There were, for a while, soft whisperings and footfalls in the chamber, as one after another stole in, to look at the dead; and then came the little coffin; and then there was a funeral, and carriages drove to the door, and strangers came and were seated; and there were white scarfs and ribbons, and crape bands, and mourners dressed in black crape; and there were words read from the Bible, and prayers offered; and St. Clare lived, and walked, and moved, as one who has shed every tear;-to the last he saw only one thing, that golden head in the coffin; but then he saw the cloth spread over it, the lid of the coffin closed; and he walked, when he was put beside the others, down to a little place at the bottom of the garden, and there, by the mossy seat where she and Tom had talked, and sung, and read so often, was the little grave. St. Clare stood beside it,-looked vacantly down; he saw them lower the little coffin; he heard, dimly, the solemn words, 'I am the resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live;' and, as the earth was cast in and filled up the little grave, he could not realize that it was his Eva that they were hiding from his sight.
Nor was it!-not Eva, but only the frail seed of that bright, immortal form with which she shall yet come forth, in the day of the Lord Jesus!
And then all were gone, and the mourners went back to the place which should know her no more; and Marie's room was darkened, and she lay on the bed, sobbing and moaning in uncontrollable grief, and calling every moment for the attentions of all her servants. Of course, they had no time to cry,-why should they? the grief was
'St. Clare did not shed a tear,' she said; 'he didn't sympathize with her; it was perfectly wonderful to think how hard-hearted and unfeeling he was, when he must know how she suffered.'
So much are people the slave of their eye and ear, that many of the servants really thought that Missis was the principal sufferer in the case, especially as Marie began to have hysterical spasms, and sent for the doctor, and at last declared herself dying; and, in the running and scampering, and bringing up hot bottles, and heating of flannels, and chafing, and fussing, that ensued, there was quite a diversion.
Tom, however, had a feeling at his own heart, that drew him to his master. He followed him wherever he walked, wistfully and sadly; and when he saw him sitting, so pale and quiet, in Eva's room, holding before his eyes her little open Bible, though seeing no letter or word of what was in it, there was more sorrow to Tom in that still, fixed, tearless eye, than in all Marie's moans and lamentations.
In a few days the St. Clare family were back again in the city; Augustine, with the restlessness of grief, longing for another scene, to change the current of his thoughts. So they left the house and garden, with its little grave, and came back to New Orleans; and St. Clare walked the streets busily, and strove to fill up the chasm in his heart with hurry and bustle, and change of place; and people who saw him in the street, or met him at the cafe, knew of his loss only by the weed on his hat; for there he was, smiling and talking, and reading the newspaper, and speculating on politics, and attending to business matters; and who could see that all this smiling outside was but a hollowed shell over a heart that was a dark and silent sepulchre?
'Mr. St. Clare is a singular man,' said Marie to Miss Ophelia, in a complaining tone. 'I used to think, if there was anything in the world he did love, it was our dear little Eva; but he seems to be forgetting her very easily. I cannot ever get him to talk about her. I really did think he would show more feeling!'
'Still waters run deepest, they used to tell me,' said Miss Ophelia, oracularly.
'O, I don't believe in such things; it's all talk. If people have feeling, they will show it,-they can't help it; but, then, it's a great misfortune to have feeling. I'd rather have been made like St. Clare. My feelings prey upon me so!'
'Sure, Missis, Mas'r St. Clare is gettin' thin as a shader. They say, he don't never eat nothin',' said Mammy. 'I know he don't forget Miss Eva; I know there couldn't nobody,-dear, little, blessed cretur!' she added, wiping her eyes.
'Well, at all events, he has no consideration for me,' said Marie; 'he hasn't
