Nothing had changed during the interval of her solitary employment--her
father yet slept; the gloomy silence yet prevailed in the street. She
placed herself at the window, and partially drew aside the curtain to
let the warm breezes from without blow over her cold brow. The same
ineffable resignation, the same unnatural quietude, which had sunk down
over her faculties since she had entered the room, overspread them
still. Surrounding objects failed to impress her attention;
recollections and forebodings stagnated in her mind. A marble composure
prevailed over her features. Sometimes her eyes wandered mechanically
from the morsels of food by her side to her sleeping father, as her one
vacant idea of watching for his service, till the feeble pulses of life
had throbbed their last, alternately revived and declined; but no other
evidences of bodily existence or mental activity appeared in her. As
she now sat in the half-darkened room, by the couch on which her father
reposed--her features pale, calm, and rigid, her form enveloped in cold
white drapery--there were moments when she looked like one of the
penitential devotees of the primitive Church, appointed to watch in the
house of mourning, and surprised in her saintly vigil by the advent of
Death.
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