Never had any odour so delighted my senses; never had any
sensuous influence so soothed my soul.
While I stood inhaling the scents of opobalsam, and cinnamon and
myrrh, and wine of palm and oil of cedar, and all the other spices of
the Pharaohs, mingled in one strange aromatic cloud, my personality
seemed again to become, in part, the reflex of ancestral experiences.
I opened my eyes. I looked into the coffin. The face (which had been
left by the embalmer exposed) confronted mine. 'Fenella Stanley!' I
cried, for the great transfigurer Death had written upon my father's
brow that self-same message which the passions of a thousand Romany
ancestors had set upon the face of her whose portrait hung in the
picture-gallery. And the rubies and diamonds and beryls of the cross
as it now hung upon my breast, catching the light of the opened
lantern in my left hand, shed over the features an indescribable
reflex hue of quivering rose.
Beneath his head I placed the silver casket: I hung the hair-chain
round his neck: I laid upon his breast the long-loved memento of his
love and the parchment scroll.
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