She found her father in the old familiar dining-room, waiting for her. The months had made his shoulders more stooping, his manner feebler, more helpless. He looked so really wretched that she forgot her own grief and put her arms about him and kissed him.
"What is she doing?" he whispered, as though they stood in the invalid's room. "Is she asleep?"
Nora nodded.
"Yes; I think so. Our talking made her very tired."
A groan escaped from the man's quivering lips.
"The doctor said we must be prepared any moment for the worst," he said. "It is awful—I can scarcely bring myself to believe that it is God's will. How can I live without her?"
"We must help each other. And we must make the last days happy."
"Yes, yes; we must try," he agreed, beginning to pace restlessly backwards and forwards. "We must make her happy. Nora——" He stopped and looked piteously at her over his spectacles. "Nora, you think she was happy?"
"Happy?" she echoed. Somehow, the thought of her mother's happiness had scarcely ever occurred to her.
"I mean—I have been thinking, since I knew that we were to lose her, that she would have been happier in another sort of life—that I did not think enough about her: I was always so busy with the poor and the parish. It is perhaps foolish of me. A man of sensitive conscience is liable to unreasonable remorse. I should be glad—I should be easier in my mind if you gave me your opinion."