Blithedale Pasture

The procession moved from the farmhouse. Nearest the dead walked an
old man in deep mourning, his face mostly concealed in a white
handkerchief, and with Priscilla leaning on his arm. Hollingsworth and
myself came next. We all stood around the narrow niche in the cold
earth; all saw the coffin lowered in; all heard the rattle of the
crumbly soil upon its lid,--that final sound, which mortality awakens
on the utmost verge of sense, as if in the vain hope of bringing an
echo from the spiritual world.

I noticed a stranger,--a stranger to most of those present, though
known to me,--who, after the coffin had descended, took up a handful of
earth and flung it first into the grave. I had given up
Hollingsworth's arm, and now found myself near this man.

"It was an idle thing--a foolish thing--for Zenobia to do," said he.
"She was the last woman in the world to whom death could have been
necessary. It was too absurd! I have no patience with her."

"Why so?" I inquired, smothering my horror at his cold comment, in my
eager curiosity to discover some tangible truth as to his relation with
Zenobia. "If any crisis could justify the sad wrong she offered to
herself, it was surely that in which she stood. Everything had failed
her; prosperity in the world's sense, for her opulence was gone,--the
heart's prosperity, in love. And there was a secret burden on her, the
nature of which is best known to you. Young as she was, she had tried
life fully, had no more to hope, and something, perhaps, to fear. Had
Providence taken her away in its own holy hand, I should have thought
it the kindest dispensation that could be awarded to one so wrecked."