now they had returned.

"The doctor thought we'd better come over," Amberson said, then was
silent, and George, shaking violently, sat down on the edge of the bed.
His shaking continued, and from time to time he wiped heavy sweat from
his forehead.

The hours passed, and sometimes the old man upon the bed would snore a
little, stop suddenly, and move as if to rise, but George Amberson would
set a hand upon his shoulder, and murmur a reassuring word or two. Now
and then, either uncle or nephew would tiptoe into the hall and look
toward Isabel's room, then come tiptoeing back, the other watching him
haggardly.

Once George gasped defiantly: "That doctor in New York said she might
get better! Don't you know he did? Don't you know he said she might?"

Amberson made no answer.

Dawn had been murking through the smoky windows, growing stronger for
half an hour, when both men started violently at a sound in the hall;
and the Major sat up on the bed, unchecked. It was the voice of the
nurse speaking to Fanny Minafer, and the next moment, Fanny appeared in
the doorway, making contorted efforts to speak.

Amberson said weakly: "Does she want us--to come in?"

But Fanny found her voice, and uttered a long, loud cry. She threw her
arms about George, and sobbed in an agony of loss and compassion:

"She loved you!" she wailed. "She loved you! She loved you! Oh, how she
did love you!"

Isabel had just left them.

Chapter XXX

Major Amberson remained dry-eyed through the time that followed: he
knew that this separation from his daughter would be short, that the
separation which had preceded it was the long one. He worked at his
ledgers no more under his old gas drop-light, but would sit all evening
staring into the fire, in his bedroom, and not speaking unless someone
asked him a question. He seemed almost unaware of what went on around
him, and those who were with him thought him dazed by Isabel's death,
guessing that he was lost in reminiscences and vague dreams. "Probably
his mind is full of pictures of his youth, or the Civil War, and the
days when he and mother were young married people and all of us children
were jolly little things--and the city was a small town with one cobbled
street and the others just dirt roads with board sidewalks." This was
George Amberson's conjecture, and the others agreed; but they were
mistaken. The Major was engaged in the profoundest thinking of his
life. No business plans whic