"I know I am not. You know it too. It is not I who am exciting myself—it is you, because you wish to kill me!" She shuddered violently, and covered her face with her hands. "Why, when you have asked me whether you could do anything for me, have I desired you to let me alone? Because I could see plainly that you wished not to be troubled about me; that you were pretending—that you were wholly false in your advances. There are a thousand things a child can do for a parent in my condition which would bring pleasure to him. Have you done one? That I am impatient, querulous, quick-tempered—is not that natural when a man is in anguish day and night? Did you ever give that a thought? do you give it a thought now?"
"Father," said poor Phœbe, feeling acutely the bitter injustice of her father's accusations, and yet not knowing how to combat them without plunging him into deeper excitement, "I will nurse you if you will allow me; I will do everything in my power to restore you to health. Try me, father!"
"You do not intend to leave Parksides, then, without my permission?"
"To leave Parksides without your permission!" she echoed. "No, father!"
"For the few weeks that remain to me you will not leave the house? You will nurse me—you will soothe my last hours?"
"Oh, father, do not speak like that! I will do all you wish."
"Out of your own loving heart?"
"Yes, father, out of my own loving heart!"
"Swear it!" he cried, in a loud, commanding tone, pushing his dead wife's prayer-book to the guileless girl. "Kiss your mother's prayer-book, and prove to me whether you are lying or speaking the truth!"
In an impulse of fervour and self-reproach she kissed the prayer-book. He took it from her hands.