'Come to my house with me,' said the kind old curate; but Dulcie shook her head.
'I cannot leave papa, dead or alive. I wish to be with him, and alone.'
'I shall not leave you so; it is a mistake in grief to avoid contact with the world. The mind only gets sadder and deeper into its gloom of melancholy. If you could but sleep, child, a little.'
'Sleep—I feel as if I had been asleep for years; and it was this morning, you tell me—only this morning I had my arms round his neck—dead—my darling papa dead!'
She started to her feet as if to go where the body lay under the now useless hands of the doctor, but would have fallen had she not clutched for support at Mr. Pentreath, who upheld and restrained her.
The awful thought of her future loneliness now that she had thus suddenly lost her father, as she had not another relation in the world, haunted the unhappy Dulcie, and deprived her of the power of taking food or obtaining sleep.
In vain her old servants, who had known her from infancy, coaxed her to attempt both, but sleep would not come, and the food remained untasted before her.
'A little water,' she would say; 'give me a little water, for thirst parches me.'
All that passed subsequently seemed like one long and terrible dream to Dulcie. She was alone in the world, and when her father was laid in his last home at Revelstoke, within sound of the tumbling waves, in addition to being alone she found herself well-nigh penniless, for her father had nothing to leave her but the old furniture of the house they had inhabited.
That was sold, and she was to remain with the family of the curate till some situation could be procured for her.