His trembling hands had closed upon these notes, and he was about to—no, not to replace them in the pocket-book, when suddenly the chamber door was thrown open, and his daughter stood before him, flushed with fear and anger.
"For shame, father! Oh, father, father! What is it you are doing? Put them back, put them back, put them back!" she cried, in tones of terror. "And thank God for having saved you from this sin."
"Elizabeth, woman! How dare you speak to me like that? What is it you mean? What business have you to be prying into what doesn't concern you?" stammered the miserable old man, in broken sentences, as he sprang to his feet, the bank paper still in his grasp.
"Put them back! Put them back!" repeated the daughter, in yet stronger tones of desperation. "Strike me if you will, father," she cried, as she thought she detected a threatening gesture in the clenched hand. "Strike me, and kill me, if you will, and let me be laid along with poor Walter—oh, I wish I could be! I wish I could be!—But don't rob the dead and the living as well. Father, dear father," she went on, in more imploring accents; "put them back; oh, father, put them back!"
"How came you here, girl?" demanded the old man, hoarsely.
"God sent me, I think," said she; "oh, father, I heard you come in, and knew that you came up here, and I followed, and have seen it all from that little window—" and she pointed to a single pane of glass in a corner of the room near the ceiling, which dimly lighted a narrow dark staircase to the attic above—"and God has sent me to keep you from doing a great sin. Oh, father, father, put them back!"
Slowly and silently the old man cast his eyes on to the floor, stooped, picked up the pocket-book, put the notes in their former position, then passionately threw the book down again, muttering, "I shall remember this, Elizabeth. I shan't forget it, you may make sure of that," and then he shuffled out of the room.
It was a fine, soft, sunny day on the afternoon of which Walter Wilson was buried. There was but little pomp at that funeral, though there were many to follow him to his grave.
There was Helen as chief mourner, and the ceremonious undertaker said that it was the right and proper thing for her, as the only child, to walk first and alone, behind the coffin, all the way from Low Beech Farm to the church—for it was a walking funeral, as was the fashion then in those parts; but Helen pleaded so earnestly and tearfully that Sarah might accompany her and support her, and so put strength into her to bear the last scene in her father's history on earth, that it was yielded.
And so Walter's old discarded lover, and his daughter by another and perhaps more highly-prized wife than Sarah would ever have been, followed him together and stood side by side at the open grave, and were the last to depart when the solemn ceremony was over.