Eva's death has been well prepared for; we have seen it coming for four chapters at least (and longer than that, if we recognized the signs of her "specialness"). St. Clare's death, too, has been foreshadowed: Eva has told him, in Chapter 24, that he will "come to her"; even Ophelia may have had a premonition, causing her to insist on Topsy's becoming her property immediately (for, as an unmarried woman, Ophelia can own property — including this human property — in her own name); and surely St. Clare's thoughts of his mother, on his last afternoon, are feelings of foreboding. Yet this second death is a surprise, at least to his wife and to his servants, who now belong to Marie. No wonder they all weep so pitifully!
Augustine St. Clare's unexpected death serves, again, to reinforce the theme of moral wrong. If St. Clare was the most generous of masters, indulgent, kind, and actually (sometimes) respectful of his servants as fellow human beings, still his leaving them in other hands, probably worse hands than his, possibly many, many times worse (and we shall see how some of them fare), makes him as bad as those who will now own them. As Haley told young George Shelby, everyone who participates in the business of slavery is reduced to the same level; ironically, St. Clare, the "man of humanity" who has dominated Tom's life for over two years, was no better than the almost demonic figure who will come to own Tom next.
