ther, and evidently trying to
catch some faint words he was saying, as I stole forward and knelt down
by the bedside. My father turned his eyes slowly round till they fell
upon me,--when their expression suddenly changed from the look of weary
apathy to a stare of full and steadfast meaning,--intense, indeed, in
significance; but I dare not say that this conveyed anything like love
or affection for me.

"Come closer," cried he, in a hoarse whisper. "It is Digby, is it not?
This boy is my son, Hunyadi," he said, with an increased effort. "Give
me your hand." He took my trembling fingers in his cold moist hand,
and passed the large signet ring over my second finger. "He is my heir.
Gentlemen," he cried, in a tone at once haughty and broken by debility,
"my name, my title, my fortune all pas" to _him_. By to-morrow you will
call him Sir Digby--"

He could not finish; his lips moved without a sound. I was conscious of
no more than being drawn heavily across the floor, not utterly bereft of
reason, but dulled and stunned as if from the effect of a heavy blow.

When I was able, I crept back to the room. It was now the decline of
day. A large white cavalry cloak covered the body. I knelt down beside
it, and cried with a bursting heart till late into the night.

CHAPTER XXXI. IN SORROW

Of what followed that night of mourning I remember but snatches and
brief glimpses. There is nothing more positively torturing to the mind
in sorrow than the way in which the mere excitement of grief robs
the intellect of all power of perspective, and gives to the smallest,
meanest incidents the prominence and force of great events. It is as
though the jar given to the nervous system had untuned us for the entire
world, and all things come amiss. I am sure, indeed, I know it would
have been impossible to have met more gentle and considerate kindness
than I now experienced on every hand, and yet I lived in a sort of
feverish irritability, as though expecting each moment to have my
position questioned, and my right to be there disputed.

In obedience to the custom of the country, it was necessary that the
funeral should take place within forty-eight hours after death, and
though all the details had been carefully looked to by the Count's
orders, certain questions still should be asked of me, and my leave
obtained for certain acts.

The small church of Hunyadi-Naglos was fixed on for the last
resting-place. It contained the graves of