But when the occasion came we found
it the simplest and truest thing, after all, to content ourselves
with the old fashion, taking away what we could, but interpolating no
novelties, and particularly avoiding all frippery of flowers and
cheerful emblems. The procession moved from the farmhouse. Nearest
the dead walked an old man in deep mourning, his face mostly
concealed in a white handkerchief, and with Priscilla leaning on his
arm. Hollingsworth and myself came next. We all stood around the
narrow niche in the cold earth; all saw the coffin lowered in; all
heard the rattle of the crumbly soil upon its lid,--that final sound,
which mortality awakens on the utmost verge of sense, as if in the
vain hope of bringing an echo from the spiritual world.
I noticed a stranger,--a stranger to most of those present, though
known to me,--who, after the coffin had descended, took up a handful
of earth and flung it first into the grave. I had given up
Hollingsworth's arm, and now found myself near this man.
"It was an idle thing--a foolish thing--for Zenobia to do," said he.
"She was the last woman in the world to whom death could have been
necessary. It was too absurd! I have no patience with her."
"Why so?" I inquired, smothering my horror at his cold comment, in
my eager curiosity to discover some tangible truth as to his relation
with Zenobia. "If any crisis could justify the sad wrong she offered
to herself, it was surely that in which she stood.
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