Ugh! I get a whiff of
it now. Burn some of that aromatic paper; but open the hall windows
first.'
Charles did as he was ordered, and the wind was soon sweeping through
the wide hall, while Arthur's rooms were filled with an odor like the
sweet incense burned in the old cathedrals.
'I am very giddy and faint,' Arthur said, when Charles came back to him
after his ventilating operation. 'I have looked at the bright snow too
long, and there are a thousand rings of fire dancing before my eyes, and
in every ring I see a blue hood and veil, with waves of hair like
Gretchen's, when she was a child. There is a redder tinge now on
Gretchen's hair, because she is older. Wheel me out there, Charles,
where I can see her.'
Charles obeyed, and moved the light bed-lounge into the library, where
his master could feast his eyes upon the sweet face which knew no
change, but which always, night and day, smiled upon him the same. The
picture had a soothing effect upon Arthur, and he gazed at it now until
it began to fade away and lose itself in the blue hood and veil he had
seen in the sleigh far down the avenue; and when, a few minutes later,
Charles came in to look at him, he found him fast asleep.
Meantime the funeral train had reached the cemetery, where the snow was
piled in great drifts, and where, in a corner of the Tracy lot, they
buried the stranger, with no tear to hallow her grave, and no pang of
regret save that she had ever come there, with the mystery and the doubt
which must always cling to her memory.
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