ith inexpressible softness and sadness at the little sleeping
face; and Violet, while gratified by that look of affection, could not
help having it the more borne in on her mind, that death must be very
near. Were the well-springs of love, so long closed up, only opening
when he was about to leave his children for ever? If she could only have
heard him speak!

Presently, as if there was some sting of reproach in the impassive
features, he turned his head away abruptly, with a deep groan, and hid
his face. She took away the child, and there was another silence, which
she ventured to break now and then, by a few sentences of faith and
prayer, but without being able to perceive whether he attended. Suddenly
he started, as if thrilled in every vein, and glanced around with
terrified anxiety, of which she could not at first perceive the cause,
till she found it was the postman's knock. He held out his hand for the
letters, and cast a hurried look at their directions. None were for
him, but there was one in his sister's hand-writing. Violet did not feel
herself able to read it, and was laying it aside, when she saw his looks
following it. Her present world was so entirely in that room that she
had forgotten all beyond; and it only now occurred to her to say, 'Your
father? Do you wish for him? I will write.'

'Telegraph.' Even this whisper brought back the cough that was anguish
and terror.

It was already so late in the day, that though thus summoned, there was
no chance of Lord Martindale's arriving till the following evening; and
Violet's heart sank at reckoning up the space that must elapse, more
especially when she saw the perturbed eye, the startings at each sound,
the determination to know the business of every one who came to speak to
her--evident indications that there was some anxiety on his mind which
she could not comprehend.

Thus passed the day--between visits from desponding doctors and vain
measures for reducing the inflammation. At night Mr. Harding would have
prevailed on her to go to rest, promising to keep watch in her stead;
but she only shook her head, and said she could not. She had not seen,
and had scarcely thought of, the elder children all day; but at about
eleven o'clock at night she was startled by a sound of lamentable
crying,--Johnnie's voice in the nursery. The poor little boy's nerves
had been so much shaken by the fire at Martindale, that he had become
subject to night alarms, which someti