Page:Alice Lauder.pdf/242

stant, and then turned away without a word. The carriage wheels grated on the gravel, and had rolled far away before Alice awakened from the trance of mingled feeling that the strange visit produced in her thoughts. . . . . She never met Mrs.Austin again; but some years later, when she was on a visit to some Devonshire cousins, they took her to see the show monument of their little church—a beautiful recumbent statue of a young mother lying on a couch, and clasping an infant lightly in her arms—in the best style of modern art. The pure whiteness of the marble, the lovely features of the sculptured portrait, the “rapture of repose” expressed in the whole figure, fascinated the eye with its melancholy sweetness. There was an expression of angelic calm and happiness on the mother’s marble countenance. Underneath was the name “Elizabeth,” and the dates of birth and of death, and the text—(“chosen by herself as she was departing”)—“And the prophet said unto her, ‘Is it well with thee? Is it well with the child? And she answered, ‘It is well.’”