The Insane Root by Rosa Praed — Read

The funeral was over, and the mortal remains of Isàdas Pacha were laid in the earth. He had desired to be buried in the place where he died, not in Abaria or the island of his ancestors, so a grave was dug in the Catholic cemetery at Kensal Green. It was a grand procession which left the Embassy. The spirit of Isàdas must have been glad, if it were hovering near, to see the homage paid to its earthly casket. And indeed to Marillier, who was in a strange mood that morning, haunted by the old man's mystic utterances, and racked with the emotion he had endured after overhearing the scene between Ruel Bey and Rachel, it seemed that the Pacha's spirit might well be present at this imposing ceremonial--that ironic spirit scoffing, amused, interested, yet all the time, not unmindful of the daughter of his old love, and at the last, stretching forth the dead hand he had spoken of to save her from sorrow.

The day was gloomy beyond description, as November days are apt to be. A grey fog enveloped that part of London--not a thick brown fog closing one in like a wall, but a ghostly spreading mist, which made the houses loom in gigantic proportions along the street, and the people walking and the carriages and carts look as though great shadows had descended and taken to themselves forms. The scarlet tunics of a detachment of the Guards which the Queen had sent, made the only definite block of colour in the leaden mist which filled the square, until the coffin was borne down with its covering pall of flowers, while the men in uniforms and decorations round it and the crimson fezzes of the secretaries blended at in a variegated mass, and then dispersed, as the mourners followed the dead chief in due order.