Bathsheba skirted the buttress, and beheld the hole
and the tomb, its delicately veined surface splashed and
stained just as Troy had seen it and left it two hours
earlier. On the other side of the scene stood Gabriel.
His eyes, too, were fixed on the tomb, and her arrival
having been noiseless, she had not as yet attracted his
attention. Bathsheba did not at once perceive that the
grand tomb and the disturbed grave were Fanny's, and
she looked on both sides and around for some humbler
mound, earthed up and clodded in the usual way. Then
her eye followed Oak's, and she read the words with
which the inscription opened: --
"Erected by Francis Troy in Beloved Memory of
Fanny Robin."
Oak saw her, and his first act was to gaze inquiringly
and learn how she received this knowledge of the
authorship of the work, which to himself had caused
considerable astonishment. But such discoveries did
not much affect her now. Emotional convulsions seemed
to have become the commonplaces of her history, and
she bade him good morning, and asked him to fill in
the hole with the spade which was standing by.
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