Page:The Mystery of Madeline Le Blanc (1900).djvu/56

56 ery," one feels like crying, "what possibilities lie buried in the tombs of youth!"

The first shadows of the coming night mingled with the brightness of the day, as the procession came in view of the cemetery. It was a desolate, old and endless place, dotted with a few bright and many darkened monuments, The ancient gate through which the procession passed had long ago lost its doors. The straw of withered weeds lay profusely about, and with the coarse grass hid many of the only surviving testimonials of the dead and forgotten. Nature here seemed ruder than elsewhere, spreading oblivion and forgetfulness alike over the humblest headstones and the proudest monument.

Irène had not been in the chapel, nor was she now in the cemetery; but in the mother's sorrow she was not missed; and who else would think of her?

The friends gathered round a newly made grave, almost in the northwest corner, between a rude fence, which divided the cemetery from the valley, and a thick, brown, old monument, from which time had effaced every inscription save a date early in the last century. The