to say that, if you feel well enough, he
wishes to see you in his own room."

I rose, and immediately followed the servant. On our way, we passed the
door of Clara's private sitting-room--it opened, and my sister came
out and laid her hand on my arm. She smiled as I looked at her; but the
tears stood thick in her eyes, and her face was deadly pale.

"Think of what I said last night, Basil," she whispered, "and, if hard
words are spoken to you, think of _me._ All that our mother would have
done for you, if she had been still among us, _I_ will do. Remember
that, and keep heart and hope to the very last."

She hastily returned to her room, and I went on down stairs. In the
hall, the servant was waiting for me, with a letter in his hand.

"This was left for you, Sir, a little while ago. The messenger who
brought it said he was not to wait for an answer."

It was no time for reading letters--the interview with my father was too
close at hand. I hastily put the letter into my pocket, barely noticing,
as I did so, that the handwriting on the address was very irregular, and
quite unknown to me.

I went at once into my father's room.

He was sitting at his table, cutting the leaves of some new books
that lay on it. Pointing to a chair placed opposite to him, he briefly
inquired after my health; and then added, in a lower tone--

"Take any time you like, Basil, to compose and collect yourself. This
morning my time is yours."

He turned a little away from me, and went on cutting the leaves of the
books placed before him. Still utterly incapable of preparing myself in
any way for the disclosure expected from me; without thought or hope,
or feeling of any kind, except a vague sense of thankfulness for the
reprieve granted me before I was called on to speak--I mechanically
looked round and round the room, as if I expected to see the sentence
to be pronounced against me, already written on the walls, or grimly
foreshadowed in the faces of the old family portraits which hung above
the fireplace.

What man has ever felt that all his thinking powers were absorbed, even
by the most poignant mental misery that could occupy them? In moments
of imminent danger, the mind can still travel of its own accord over the
past, in spite of the present--in moments of bitter affliction, it can
still recur to every-day trifles, in spite of ourselves. While I now
sat silent in my father's room, long-forgotten associations of childhood
conne