"God."
She hid her face upon his velvet waistcoat, strangely still.
"He would guide, and guard, and love you ever, Ellen. Loving Him you would be His dear child always, and He would bring you in time to me. Look up, my dear one."
"Must you go the journey?"
"I fear so."
"Oh, papa!--and don't you care--don't you care for mamma and me, that you must leave us?"
"Care!"
He could say no more; the word seemed to put the finishing stroke to his breaking heart. Sobs broke from his lips; tears, such as man rarely sheds, streamed down on the little nestling head. A cry of anguish, patient and imploring, that the parting might be soothed to them all, went up aloft to his Father in Heaven.
After dusk came on, when the visitors were got rid of,--for Clare Joliffe had stayed an unconscionable time, talking over old interests at Helstonleigh--Mrs. Channing found her husband asleep in his chair. Closing the door softly on him, she sat down by the dining-room fire, and the long pent-up tears burst forth. Hamish Channing's wife was a brave woman but there are griefs that go well-nigh, when they fall, to shatter the bravest of us. Miss Nelly, captured ever so long ago by nurse, was at tea in the nursery.
Roland Yorke surprised Mrs. Channing in her sorrow. Roland never came into the house with a clatter now (at least when he thought of its master's sick state), but with as softly decorous a step as his boots could be controlled to. Down he sat in silence, on the opposite side of the hearth, and saw the reflection of Mrs. Channing's tears in the firelight.