Sir Walter lay in his luxurious bed, where everything was arranged with the perfection of comfort, warmth, softness, lightness, all that wealth could procure to smooth the downward path. He was not in pain. Even the restlessness which is worse than pain, which so often makes the last hours of life miserable, an agony to the watchers, perhaps less so to the sufferer, had not come to this old man. He lay quite still, with eyes shining unnaturally bright from amid the curves and puckers of his heavy old eyelids, with a half smile on his face, and the air of deliverance from all care which some dying people have. He was dying not of illness, but because suddenly the supplies of life had failed, the golden cord had broken, its strands were dropping asunder. The wheels were soon to stand still, but for the moment that condition of suspense did not seem to be painful. There was fever in his eyes which threw a certain glamour over everything about. He had asked that the candles might be lighted, that the room should be made bright, and had called his daughter to his side. Perhaps it was only her own anxiety which had made her suppose that he had asked for Rochford and the papers. At all events, if he had done so, he did so no more. He held her hand, or rather she held his as she stood by him, and he lightly patted it with the other of his large, soft, feeble hands.

“You are looking beautiful to-night—as I used to see you—not as you have been of late. Alicia, you are looking like a queen to-night.”

“Oh, father, dear father, my beauty is all in your eyes.”

“Perhaps, more or less,” he said; “I have fever in my eyes, and that gives a glory. The lights are all like stars, and my child’s eyes more than all. You were a beautiful girl, Alicia. I was very proud of you. Nobody but your father ever knew how sweet you were. You were a little proud outside, perhaps a little proud. And then we had so much trouble—together, you and I—”

She said nothing. She had not attained even now to the contemplative calm which could look back upon that trouble mildly. It brought hard heart-beats, convulsive throbs of pain to her bosom still. She had silenced him often by some cry of unsoftened anguish when he had begun so to speak. But as he lay waiting there, as it were in the vestibule of death, saying his last words, she could silence him no more.

“Something has occurred to-night,” he said, “that has brought it all back. What was it, Alicia? Perhaps your ball; the dancing—we’ve not danced here for long enough—or the music. Music is a thing that is full of associations; it brings things back. Was there anything more? Yes, I think there must have been something more.”

She stood looking at him with dumb inexpressive eyes. She could not, would not say what it was besides, not even now at the last moment, at the supreme moment. All the opposition of her nature was in this. Love and pride and sorrow and the bitter sense of disappointment and loss, all joined together. She met his searching glance, though it was pathetic in its inquiry, with blank unresponsive eyes. And after awhile in his feebleness he gave up the inquiry.

“We have gone through a great deal together, you and I—ah, that is so—only sometimes I think there was a great deal of pride in it, my dear. My two poor boys—poor boys! I might be hard on them sometimes. There was the disappointment and the humiliation. God would be kinder to them. He’s the real father, you know. I feel it by myself. Many and many a time in these long years my heart has yearned over them. Oh, poor boys, poor silly boys! had they but known, at least in this their day—Alicia! how could you and I standing outside know what was passing between God and them when they lay—as I am lying now?’

“Oh, father, father!” she cried, with an anguish in her voice.

“It is you that are standing outside now, Alicia, alone, poor girl; and you don’t know what’s passing between God and me. A great deal that I never could have thought of—like friends, like friends! I feel easy about the boys, not anxious any longer. After all, you know, they belong to God, too, although they are foolish and weak. Very likely they are doing better—well, now—”

“Oh, father!” she cried, with a keen pang of pain at what she thought the wandering of his mind. “You forget, you forget that they are dead.”

“Dead!” he repeated, slowly. “I don’t forget; but do you know what that means? We never understand anything till we come to it in this life. I’m coming very close, but I don’t see—yet—except that it’s very different—very different—not at all what we thought.”

“Father,” she cried, in the tumult of her thoughts: “oh, tell me something about yourself! Are you happy—do you feel—do you remember—”

Alicia Penton had said the prayers and received the faith of Christians all her life, and she wanted, if she could, to recall to the dying man those formulas which seemed fit for his state, to hear him say that he was supported in that dread passage by the consolations of the Gospel. But her lips, unapt to speak upon such subjects, seemed closed, and she could not find a word to say.

“Happy!” he said, with that mild reflectiveness which seemed to have come with the approaching end. “It is a long, long time since I’ve been asked that question. If you mean, am I afraid? No, no; I’m not afraid. I’m—among friends. I feel—quite pleased about it all. It will be all right, whatever happens. I don’t seem to have anything to do with it. In my life I have always felt that I had everything to do with it, Alicia; and so have you, my dear; it’s your fault, too. We were always setting God right. But it’s far better this way. I’m an old fellow—an old, old fellow—and I wonder if this is what is called second childhood, Alicia; for I could feel,” he said, with the touching laugh of weakness, “as if I were being carried away—in some one’s arms.”

His heavy eyes, that were still bright with fever, closed with a sort of smiling peacefulness, then opened again with a little start. “But it seemed to me just now as if there was something to do—what was there to do?—before I give myself over. I don’t want to be disturbed, but if there is something to do—Ah, Gerald, my good fellow, you are here, too.”

Russell Penton had come in to say that the men who had been sent for so hurriedly, they whose coming was so important, a matter almost of life and death, had arrived. He had entered the room while Sir Walter was speaking, but the hush of peace about the bed had stopped on his lips the words he had been about to say. He came forward and took the other hand, which his father-in-law, scarcely able to raise it, stretched out toward him faintly with a smile. “I hope you are better, sir,” he said, mechanically, bending over the soft helpless hand, and under his breath to his wife, “They are come,” he said.

She gave him a look of helplessness and dismay, with an appeal in it. What could be done? Could anything be said of mortal business now? Could they come in with their papers, with their conflict of human interests and passion, to this sanctuary of fading life? And yet again, could Alicia Penton make up her mind to be balked, disappointed, triumphed over in the end?

“Better—is not the word.” Sir Walter spoke very slowly, pausing constantly between his broken phrases, his voice very low, but still clear. “I am well—floating away, you know—carried very softly—in some one’s arms. You will laugh—at an old fellow. But I don’t feel quite clear if I am an old fellow, or perhaps—a child.” Then came that fluttering laugh of weakness, full of pathetic pleasure and weeping and well-being. “But,” he added, with a deeper drawn, more difficult breath, “you come in quickly. Tell me—before it’s late. There is something on my mind—like a shadow—something to do.”

Alicia held his hand fast; she did not move, nor look up; her eyes blank, introspective, without any light in them, making no reply to him, fixed on her father’s face; but her whole being quivering with a conflict beyond describing, good and evil, the noble and the small, contending over her, in a struggle which felt like death.

A similar struggle, but slighter and fainter was in her husband’s mind; but in him it was not a mortal conflict, only a question which was best. Was it right to permit the old man to float away, as he said, without executing a project which seemed so near to his heart? Because it was not one which pleased Russell Penton, because he would rather that it should fail, he felt himself the more bound to his wife that it should not fail through him.

“It seems almost wicked to disturb you, sir,” he said, “but I heard that you wanted Rochford; if so, he is here.”

Alicia caught her husband by the arm, pressing it almost fiercely with her hand, leaning her trembling weight upon him. “But not to disturb you, father,” she cried, with a gasp.

“Ah!” said Sir Walter, “I remember. What was it? I don’t seem to see anything—except those lights like stars shining; and Alicia, Alicia! How beautiful she is looking—like a girl—to-night.”

Her husband gave her a strange glance. She was gripping his arm as if for salvation, clutching it, her breath coming quick; her cheeks with two red spots of anxiety and excitement; her eyes dull, with no expression in the intensity of their passion, fixed on her father’s face. The white dressing-gown which she had thrown on when she was called to him was open a little at the throat, and showed the gleam of the diamonds which she had not had time to take off. It was not wonderful that in the old man’s eyes, with love and fever together in them, Alicia, in her unusual white, should seem for a moment to have gone back to the dazzle and splendor of youth.

Sir Walter resumed after a moment, as though this little outbreak of tender admiration were an indulgence which he had permitted himself. “My mind’s getting very hazy, Gerald—all quite pleasant, the right thing, no trouble in it, but hazy. I remember, and yet I don’t remember. If I had but the clew—Rochford?—the young one, not the father. He’s gone, like all the rest, and now the young one—reigns in his stead. Bring him, and perhaps I’ll remember. You could tell me, you two, but you’re afraid to disturb me. What does it matter about disturbing me? a moment—and then—Send for him; perhaps I’ll remember.”

Alicia would scarcely let her husband go. She looked at him with terror in her eyes. What was she afraid of? When he withdrew his arm from her she dropped down suddenly on her knees by her father’s bedside with a low shuddering cry, and hid her face, pressing her cheek upon the old man’s hand. The excitement had risen too high. She could bear it no longer. Complicated with all the aching and trouble of the moment, the bursting of this last tie of nature, the dearest and longest companionship of her life, to have that other anxiety, the miserable question of the inheritance, the triumph or sacrifice of her pride, which yet, even amid the solemnity of death, moved her more than any other question oh earth—was something intolerable. It was more than she could bear. She sunk down, partly out of incapacity to support herself, partly that she could not, dared not, meet her father’s eyes with their vague and wistful question. “You could tell me, you two.” He had seen it, then, in her face, though she had made efforts so determined to banish all sign of comprehension, all answer out of her eyes. And now, if he insisted, how could she refuse to answer him? and if Gerald perceived that the old man had found the necessary clew through her, what would he think of her? That she had preferred her own aggrandizement to her father’s peace, that she had prompted him on the very edge of the grave to enrich herself. She could not sustain Sir Walter’s look, nor face the emergency without at least that passive protection of her husband’s presence, which for the moment was withdrawn. And Alicia trembled for the moment when the strangers would come into this sacred room; the lawyer, and Edward Penton behind him, hesitating, not without feeling (she knew), looking sadly at the death-bed where lay one whom in his early days he had looked up to with familiar kindness. Nobody in the world, not even Gerald, could be so near to him in that moment as Edward Penton. She felt this even while she trembled at the anticipation of his coming. He was nearer than any one living. He would bring in with him the shadows of those two helpless ones disappeared so long out of life. She bethought her in that moment how it had been usual to say “the three boys.” Was her mind wandering, too? All these thoughts surged up into her brain in a wild confusion—the old tenderness, the irritation, the bitter jealous grudge at him who had outlived the others, the natural longing toward one who could understand.

Sir Walter was unaffected by any of these thoughts; he felt it all natural—that the grief of his child should overwhelm her, that the sense of parting and loss should be profounder on her side than on his. After various efforts he raised his hand, which was so heavy, which would not obey his will, and laid it tenderly upon her bowed head. “Alicia, my dear, child, don’t let it overwhelm you. Who can tell even how small the separation is—as long as it lasts, and it can not last very long. You must not, you must not, my dear, be sorry for me. I tell you—it is all pleasant—sweet. I am not—not at all—sorry for myself. God bless you, my dear. He is so close that when I say ‘God bless you’ it is as if, my love. He Himself was putting out His hand.”

“Oh, father! oh, father!” she repeated, and could say no more.

And he lay with his face turned to her, and his hand feebly smoothing, stroking her bowed head, as if she had been a child. She was a child to him, his young Alicia, looking so beautiful after her ball, in which he had seen her—had he not seen her?—admired of everybody, the fairest, the most stately, with the Penton diamonds glittering at her white throat as they were now. He had her in his mind’s eye so distinct, as he had seen her—was it an hour, was it a life-time ago? His breathing began to be disturbed, becoming more difficult, and his thoughts to grow more confused. He talked on, in broken gasps of utterance, more difficult, always more difficult. The fog in his throat—he began to feel it now; but always in flashes saw the lights gleaming, and Alicia in full beauty, with her eyes like the stars, and those other stars, less precious, yet full of luster at her throat. He took no note of outward things, being more and more absorbed—yet with a dullness which softened everything, even the difficulty of the breath—in his own sensations, and in the sweep of the hurrying movement that seemed to be carrying him away, away, into halcyon seas beyond, into repose and smiling peace. But the woman kneeling under his hand was as much alive to every sound and incident as he was dull to them. Nothing muffled her keen sense, or stilled the flood of thoughts that were pouring through her mind. She heard, her heart leaping to the sound, steps approaching softly, on tiptoe, every noise restrained. She heard a low murmur of voices, then the opening of the door; but she was afraid to lift her head, to startle her father. She dared not look up to see who was there, or how he took the entrance of the new-comers. As for Sir Walter, he was almost beyond disturbance. His hand moved heavily from time to time over her head; sometimes there was a faint tremble when a breath came harder, nothing more. Would he die so? she asked herself, making no sign; was it all sealed up forever, the source of life that had made the light or the darkness of so many other lives. Her own wildly beating heart seemed to stand still, to stop in the tremendous suspense.

“Can you hear me?” said her husband’s voice, low and full of emotion. “Rochford is here, sir; do you want him?”

He shook his head as he spoke to the two awe-stricken men behind.

“Eh!” Sir Walter gave a start as if half awakened. “Who did you say?—I think—I must have been asleep. Some one who wants me? They’ll excuse a—a sick old man. Some one—who?—Gerald—whom did you say?”

“Rochford, sir, whom you wanted to see.”

“Rochford! What should I want with Rochford? He’s the—lawyer—the lawyer. We have had plenty to do with lawyers in our day. Yes—I think there was something if I could remember. Alicia, where is Alicia?”

She rose up quickly, all those wild sensations in her stilled by this supreme call. “I am here, father,” she said. Her countenance was perfectly colorless, except for two spots of red, of excitement and misery, on her cheeks. Her lips were parched, it was with difficulty she spoke.

“Yes, my love; stand by me till the last. What was it? I feel stronger. I can attend—to business. Tell me, my child, what it was.”

She stood for a moment speechless, turning her face toward them all with a look which was awful in its internal struggle. How was she to say it? How not to say it? Her fate, and the fate of the others, seemed to lie in her hands. It was not too late. His strength fluctuated from moment to moment, yet he could do what was needed still.

“Father,” she began, moistening her dry lips, trying to get the words out of her parched throat.

Sir Walter had opened his heavy eyes. He looked round with a bewildered, half-smiling look. Suddenly he caught sight of Edward Penton, who stood lingering, hesitating, half in sympathy, half in resistance, behind. The dying man gave a little cry of pleasure. “Ah! I remember,” he said.