One morning I heard that my aunt was dying. I crept softly from my nursery to her chamber door, and, being alarmed by her short, hard breathing, ran away again. I have a distinct recollection of confusion and dismay in the household. I did not see my mother. By-and-by one of the female servants came running in where I was, with other persons, to say that Mrs. Eppes was dead. The day passed I do not know how. Late in the afternoon I was taken to the death-chamber. The body was covered with a white cloth, over which had been strewed a profusion of flowers. A day or two after I followed the coffin to the burying-ground on the mountain-side, and saw it consigned to the earth, where it has lain undisturbed for more than fifty years.
My mother has told me that on the day of her sister's death she left her father alone for some hours. He then sent for her, and she found him with the Bible in his hands. He who has been so often and so harshly accused of unbelief--he, in his hour of intense affliction, sought and found consolation in the Sacred Volume. The Comforter was there for his true heart and devout spirit, even though his faith might not be what the world calls orthodox.
There was something very touching in the sight of this once beautiful and still lovely young woman, fading away just as the spring was coming on with its buds and blossoms--nature reviving as she was sinking, and closing her eyes on all that she loved best in life. She perished, not in autumn with the flowers, but as they were opening to the sun and air in all the freshness of spring. I think the weather was fine, for over my own recollections of these times there is a soft dreamy sort of haze, such as wraps the earth in warm dewy spring-time.
You know enough of my aunt's early history to be aware that she did not accompany her father, as my mother did, when he first went to France. She joined him, I think, only about two years before his return, and was placed in the same convent where my mother received her education. Here she went by the name of Mademoiselle _Polie_. As a child, she was called Polly by her friends. It was on her way to Paris that she staid a while in London with Mrs. Adams, and there is a pleasing mention of her in that lady's published letters.