long-expected event of the day recalled all her thoughts
to her one absorbing anxiety on Mrs. Vanstone's account.

Early in the evening the physician from London arrived. He watched
long by the bedside of the suffering woman; he remained longer still
in consultation with his medical brethren; he went back again to the
sick-room, before Miss Garth could prevail on him to communicate to her
the opinion at which he had arrived.

When he called out into the antechamber for the second time, he silently
took a chair by her side. She looked in his face; and the last faint
hope died in her before he opened his lips.

"I must speak the hard truth," he said, gently. "All that _can_ be done
_has_ been done. The next four-and-twenty hours, at most, will end
your suspense. If Nature makes no effort in that time--I grieve to say
it--you must prepare yourself for the worst."

Those words said all: they were prophetic of the end.

The night passed; and she lived through it. The next day came; and she
lingered on till the clock pointed to five. At that hour the tidings of
her husband's death had dealt the mortal blow. When the hour came round
again, the mercy of God let her go to him in the better world. Her
daughters were kneeling at the bedside as her spirit passed away.
She left them unconscious of their presence; mercifully and happily
insensible to the pang of the last farewell.

Her child survived her till the evening was on the wane and the sunset
was dim in the quiet western heaven. As the darkness came, the light of
the frail little life--faint and feeble from the first--flickered and
went out. All that was earthly of mother and child lay, that night, on
the same bed. The Angel of Death had done his awful bidding; and the two
Sisters were left alone in the world.

CHAPTER XII.

EARLIER than usual on the morning of Thursday, the twenty-third of July,
Mr. Clare appeared at the door of his cottage, and stepped out into the
little strip of garden attached to his residence.

After he had taken a few turns backward and forward, alone, he was
joined by a spare, quiet, gray-haired man, whose personal appearance was
totally devoid of marked character of any kind; whose inexpressive
face and conventionally-quiet manner presented nothing that attracted
approval and nothing that inspired dislike. This was Mr. Pendril--this
was the man on whose lips hung the future of the orphans at Combe-Raven.

"The time is getting on," he sa