feebleness and grief.

One long hour of the night had already passed away since parent and
child had been left together, and neither word nor movement had been
audible in the melancholy room. But, as the second hour began, the
girl's eyes unclosed again, and she moved painfully on the couch.
Accustomed to interpret the significance of her slightest actions,
Numerian rose and brought her one of the reviving draughts that had
been left ready for use. After she had drunk, when her eyes met her
father's fixed on her in mute and mournful inquiry, her lips closed,
and formed themselves into an expression which he remembered they had
always assumed when, as a little child, she used silently to hold up
her face to him to be kissed. The miserable contrast between what she
was now and what she had been them, was beyond the passive endurance,
the patient resignation of the spirit-broken old man; the empty cup
dropped from his hands, he knelt down by the side of the couch and
groaned aloud.

'O father! father!' cried the weak, plaintive voice above him. 'I am
dying! Let us remember that our time to be together here grows shorter
and shorter, and let us pass it as happily as we can!'

He raised his head, and looked up at her, vacant and wistful, forlorn
already, as if the death-parting was over.

'I have tried to live humbly and gratefully,' she sighed faintly. 'I
have longed to do more good on the earth than I have done! Yet you
will forgive me now, father, as you have always forgiven me! You have
been patient with me all my life; more patient than I have ever
deserved! But I had no mother to teach me to love you as I ought, to
teach me what I know now, when my death is near, and time and
opportunity are mine no longer!'

'Hush! hush!' whispered the old man affrightedly; 'you will live! God
is good, and knows that we have suffered enough. The curse of the last
separation is not pronounced against us! Live, live!'

'Father,' said the girl tenderly, 'we have that within us which not
death itself can separate. In another world I shall still think of you
when you think of me! I shall see you even when I am no more here,
when you long to see me! When you go out alone, and sit under the
trees on the garden bank where I used to sit; when you look forth on
the far plains and mountains that I used to look on; when you read at
night in the Bible that we have read in together, and remember Antonina
as you lie down sorr