She belonged to the list of persons appointed to cut life's thread when it strains, their general kindness being so liable to misdirection.
Gower left the room and went into the garden.

He had never seen a death; and the admiral's peculiar pallor intimated events proper to days of cold mist and a dripping stillness.

How we go, was the question among his problems:--if we are to go! his youthful frame insistingly added.
The fog down a wet laurel-walk contracted his mind with the chilling of his blood, and he felt that he would have to see the thing if he was to believe in it.

Of course he believed, but life throbbed rebelliously, and a picture of a desk near a lively fire-grate, books and pen and paper, and a piece of writing to be approved of by the Hesper of ladies, held ground with a pathetic heroism against the inevitable.

He got his wits to the front by walking faster; and then thought of the young countess and the friend she might be about to lose.