"Mark has promised faithfully to do it. I have been talking with him this afternoon about that and other things. I asked him what sum he would feel inclined to pay to Sara out of the business, and for what term. He said he thought he could give three hundred a-year, and would continue it for five years."
"Considering all things, it is not a very generous offer," persisted Miss Bettina. "Had your life been spared, Mark could not have expected to step into the whole of the practice these twenty years."
"It is very fair, I think, Bettina. Mark must acquire experience, remember, must work his way up to the public confidence, before people trust him as they have trusted me. He will not have his rooms filled daily with patients at a guinea a head. This has come upon me suddenly, or all things might have been managed differently. I think it would be a good plan for Mark to leave the Abbey for this house; I have told him so; but he will be the best judge of that." Miss Bettina quitted her stooping posture by the doctor and sat down, revolving all that had been said. She sat slowly rubbing her hands the one over the other, as was her habit when anything troubled her.
"I cannot realise it," she said, in a half whisper, "Richard, I cannot realise it. Surely you are not going from us!"
"I am but going to those who have preceded me, Bettina," he answered. "My wife, and Richard, and others, who have gone on before, are waiting for me, and I in my turn shall wait for you. This fretting life is over. How poor!--how poor!"--he added more emphatically, as he clasped his hands--"do even its best interests now seem beside eternity!"
[CHAPTER XXXII.]
LAST HOURS.
The lamp was placed on a chest of drawers behind the chair of Dr. Davenal. It was getting on for ten o'clock. Quite time, as had been suggested to him, that he should be in bed; but he appeared unwilling to move. He felt easy, he said: and therefore he stayed on.
The flickering light of the fire, now burning with a dull red heat, now bursting up into a blaze, threw its rays upon the chamber--destined, ere that night should close, to be a chamber of death, although they, the watchers, as yet suspected it not. The light fell upon the simple bed at the far corner, destitute of hangings--for the doctor was a foe to curtains--upon the dwarf cabinet beside it, whose lower shelves enclosed a few choice books, upon the drawers, upon the dressing-table at the farther window, and upon the open space at this end where the fire was. The light fell on the doctor as he lay back in the gaudy dressing-gown, on the chair-pillow, one hand hanging down listlessly, the other fondly resting on the soft brown hair of his daughter.
She sat on a footstool by his side, nestled close to him. Her head bowed down, for she had much ado to conceal and subdue her emotion, her hands clasped and laid upon his knee. The dread fear that he was dying rested on her heart; had come to it, as it seemed, by intuition. Not a word yet of this ominous dread had been spoken between them; each seemed to shrink from the task. But Sara strove to gather courage and strength, so that in his presence she might at least not give way.