She grasped both my hands, and gazed at me, sobbing and speechless, with quivering lips, while the tears streamed down her furrowed cheeks. She had no need to speak: I did not ask what had happened: I only asked "When?"
"A week ago to-day," sobbed the old woman. "He did not even live to see his birth-day."
"What did he die of?"
"I do not know. Nobody knows. Doctor Balthasar says he cannot understand it. He has never been quite well since you have been away; and kept growing worse and worse, though he would never own it; and two weeks ago he took to his bed, and kept perfectly still, looking always just before him, only that sometimes he would write in his house-book, and that on the very evening before; and when I came in the morning he was dead, and the book was lying on the bed, and I took it myself and showed it to nobody when they came and sealed up everything. I thought I ought to keep it for you: he used so often to say your name to himself when he was writing. What he wrote I don't know; I cannot read; but I will get it for you."
She opened the door into my father's room. It was neat as ever--painfully neat, but even more uninhabitable. The white slips of parchment, fastened with seals over the keyholes of the secretary and the old brown press in the corner, had a spectral look to me.
"Why is the lamp burning on the table?" I asked.
"They are coming this evening."
"Who are coming?"
"Sarah and her husband, and the children, I believe. Did you not know?"
"I know of nothing--nothing whatever. And there still lies my letter--unbroken! He never read it!"