In the overpowering horror of the situation, she did not lose her mind, but she sincerely believed that her body could not live till the morning.
To do her justice, as she sat there beside the dead man, bent and doubled in silent, tearless grief, a dark shawl drawn over her head to hide her face, and utterly regardless, for once, of what any one might think, she thought only of him and of what she had done.

For she understood, and she only, in all the household.
Beyond her conscious thoughts, if they could be called thoughts at all, the black figures of the forbidding future loomed darkly in her consciousness.

They were the things she knew, rather than the things she felt, but the terror of what was to be was as real as the grief for what had been, though as yet it had less strength to move her.

The blow had struck her down, and until she should try to rise she could feel nothing but the blow.

In truth she did not think that she should live until the morning.
It was midnight when they lit candles, and set them beside him in great candlesticks as he lay.