On the fifth, as we have said, she came down to the breakfast room leaning on her father's arm.
As they neared the door she paused, trembling like a leaf, and turning to him a white, anguished face.
He knew what it meant. She had not been in that room, had not taken her place at that table, since the morning of the day on which her husband was taken ill. He was with her then, in apparently perfect health; now—the places which had known him on earth would know him no more forever.
Her head dropped on her father's shoulder, a low moan escaping her pale lips.
"Dear child," he said, drawing her closer to him, and tenderly kissing her brow, "think how perfectly happy, how blest he is. You would not call him back?"
"Oh no, no!" came from the quivering lips. "'The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak!'"
"Lean on your strong Saviour," he said, "and His grace will be sufficient for you."
She sent up a silent petition, then lifting her head, "I can bear it now—He will help me," she said, and suffered him to lead her in.
Her children gathered about her with a joy that was as a cordial to her fainting spirit; their love was very sweet.
But how her heart yearned over them because they were fatherless; all the more so that she found her father's love so precious and sustaining in this time of sorrow and bereavement.