Lord Arthur was suffering, and he never spoke of it, least of all to
his wife; while she, acutely aware of it and vibrating with sympathy,
never spoke of it to him; and they were happy as those are who know
that they are drinking the last drops of earthly happiness. He died
with his wife's hand in his grasp: she gave the face--dead, but with
the appearance of life not vanished from it--one long, passionate
kiss, and left him, nor ever looked on it again.

Lady Arthur secluded herself for some weeks in her own room, seeing no
one but the servants who attended her; and when she came forth it was
found that her eccentricity had taken a curious turn: she steadily
ignored the death of her husband, acting always as if he had gone on a
journey and might at any moment return, but never naming him unless it
was absolutely necessary. She found comfort in this simulated delusion
no doubt, just as a child enjoys a fairy-tale, knowing perfectly well
all the time that it is not true. People in her own sphere said
her mind was touched: the common people about her affirmed without
hesitation that she was "daft." She rode no more, but she kept all
the horses and dogs as usual. She cultivated a taste she had for
antiquities; she wrote poetry--- ballad poetry--which people who were
considered judges thought well of; and flinging these and other things
into the awful chasm that had been made in her life, she tried her
best to fill it up. She set herself to consider the poor man's case,
and made experiments and gave advice which confirmed her poorer
brethren in their opinion that she was daft; but as her hand was
always very wide open, and they pitied her sorrow, she was much loved,
although they laughed at her zeal in preserving old ruins and her
wrath if an old stone was moved, and told, and firmly believed, that
she wrote and posted letters to Lord Arthur. What was perhaps more to
the purpose of filling the chasm than any of these things, Lady Arthur