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CHAPTER XXIV.
"Death's
A fearful thing, when we must count its steps.
*****
And was this, then, the end of those sweet dreams
Of home, and happiness, and quiet years?"
L. E. L.
It was an early and a warm spring; but, for the first time in their lives, the Carraras watched it with a divided heart. Guido dwelt on its beauty with a deeper love than he had ever before known. We turn from no object, even the most common and the most trivial, for the last time, knowing it to be the last, without a touch of sad thoughtfulness. What then must be the feeling with which we look on this glorious and beautiful world, and know that such looks are our last?—when we know that, in a few fleeting weeks, of the green leaves we now see putting forth, such as are doomed to perish early, like ourselves, will fall upon the earth, in whose dark bosom we are laid in our long rest?—that the flowers, colouring branches which droop beneath their luxury of
