“Lucilla and I have long ago said our last words, such as they are,” the Canon told him with a smile. “We understand one another too well to need to be left alone together.”
Time slipped by with monotonous regularity, the changes in the Canon almost imperceptible to the onlookers.
Then, preceded only by a telegram, Adrian came home.
“My father isn’t really dying, is he?” he asked piteously.
“He can’t take anything at all, now. It’s a question almost of hours.”
Lucilla took him upstairs to where his father lay, propped upon pillows, and they were left alone together.
“You know, it is very bad for Canon Morchard to have any agitation,” the nurse anxiously pointed out to Lucilla, when the interview had lasted a long while.
“Can it make any real difference?”
“It may reduce his strength more quickly.”
“He would say that it was worth it. He has not seen this son for a long while.”