to the
waist. The house was still, and the grayness of a cloudy day lay against
the panes of three lofty windows.

In a shabby dining-room, where a faint cold smell of dishes lingered all
the year round, sitting at the end of a long table surrounded by
many chairs pushed in with their backs close against the edge of the
perpetually laid table-cloth, she read the opening sentence: "Most
profound regret--painful duty--your father is no more--in accordance
with his instructions--fatal casualty--consolation--no blame attached to
his memory. . . ."

Her face was thin, her temples a little sunk under the smooth bands of
black hair, her lips remained resolutely compressed, while her dark eyes
grew larger, till at last, with a low cry, she stood up, and instantly
stooped to pick up another envelope which had slipped off her knees on
to the floor.

She tore it open, snatched out the inclosure. . . .

"My dearest child," it said, "I am writing this while I am able yet to
write legibly. I am trying hard to save for you all the money that is
left; I have only kept it to serve you better. It is yours. It shall not
be lost: it shall not be touched. There's five hundred pounds. Of what
I have earned I have kept nothing back till now. For the future, if I
live, I must keep back some--a little--to bring me to you. I must come
to you. I must see you once more.

"It is hard to believe that you will ever look on these lines. God
seems to have forgotten me. I want to see you--and yet death would be
a greater favor. If you ever read these words, I charge you to begin by
thanking a God merciful at last, for I shall be dead then, and it will
be well. My dear, I am at the end of my tether."

The next paragraph began with the words: "My sight is going . . ."

She read no more that day. The hand holding up the paper to her eyes
fell slowly, and her slender figure in a plain black dress walked
rigidly to the window. Her eyes were dry: no cry of sorrow or whisper of
thanks went up to heaven from her lips. Life had been too hard, for all
the efforts of his love. It had silenced her emotions. But for the first
time in all these years its sting had departed, the carking care of
poverty, the meanness of a hard struggle for bread. Even the image of
her husband and of her children seemed to glide away from her into the
gray twilight; it was her father's face alone that she saw, as though he
had come to see her, always quiet and big, as she had se