his face, in order that he might recover strength to go on a few
yards. But he would persevere. If God would but leave to him mind
enough for his work, he would go on. No personal suffering should
deter him. He told himself that there had been men in the world whose
sufferings were sharper even than his own. Of what sort had been the
life of the man who had stood for years at the top of a pillar? But
then the man on the pillar had been honoured by all around him. And
thus, though he had thought of the man on the pillar to encourage
himself by remembering how lamentable had been that man's sufferings,
he came to reflect that after all his own sufferings were perhaps
keener than those of the man on the pillar.

When he reached home, he was very ill. There was no doubt about it
then. He staggered to his arm-chair, and stared at his wife first,
then smiled at her with a ghastly smile. He trembled all over, and
when food was brought to him he could not eat it. Early on the next
morning the doctor was by his bedside, and before that evening
came he was delirious. He had been at intervals in this state for
nearly two days, when Mrs. Crawley wrote to Grace, and though she
had restrained herself telling everything, she had written with
sufficient strength to bring Grace at once to her father's bedside.

He was not so ill when Grace arrived but that he knew her, and he
seemed to receive some comfort from her coming. Before she had been
in the house an hour she was reading Greek to him, and there was
no wandering in his mind as to the due emphasis to be given to the
plaints of the injured heroines, or as to the proper meaning of the
choruses. And as he lay with his head half buried in the pillows, he
shouted out long passages, lines from tragic plays by the score, and
for a while seemed to have all the enjoyment of a dear old pleasure
placed newly within his reach. But he tired of this after a while,
and then, having looked round to see that his wife was not in the
room, he began to talk of himself.

"So you have been to Allington, my dear?"

"Yes, papa."

"Is it a pretty place?"

"Yes, papa;--very pretty."

"And they were good to you?"

"Yes, papa;--very good."

"Had they heard anything there about--me; of this trial that is to
come on?"

"Yes, papa; they had heard of it."

"And what did they say? You need not think that you will shock me
by telling me. They cannot say worse there than people have said
here,--or