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Smith and the Pharaohs, and other Tales by H. Rider (Henry Rider) Haggard
page 284 of 300 (94%)
the University and ultimately for the Army. Needless to say, she was
employed continually in trying to compose the differences between him
and this tutor. How then could she go away and leave that poor gentleman
and her old mother, who when she was not staying with one of her other
married daughters now made her home at the Hall?

Thus she argued to herself, but the truth was that she did not wish
to go. Her dearest associations were in the churchyard yonder, the
churchyard where she hoped ere long she would be laid. She hated life,
she sought and craved for death. This was her sin.

Night by night she lay awake and thought of Anthony, her darling, her
beloved. She remembered that dream of his about a home that awaited him
in another world, and she loved to fancy him as dwelling in that place
of peace and making ready for her coming.

Nobody thought of him now except herself and his old dog Nell. The dog
thought of him, she was sure, for it would sleep beneath his empty bed,
and at times sit up, look at it and whine. Then it would come and rest
its head upon her as she slept, and she would wake to find it looking at
her with a question in its eyes. One night in the darkness it did this,
then left her and broke into a joyous whimpering, such as it used to
make when its master was going to take it out. She even heard it jumping
up as though to paw at him, and wondered dreamily what it could mean.

When she woke in the morning she saw the poor beast lying stiff and cold
upon the bed that had been Anthony's, and though she wept over it, her
tears were perhaps those of envy rather than of sorrow, for she was sure
that it had found Anthony.

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