“Understand one thing, Mr. Hastings—that until this morning we saw no fear of immediate danger. Lord Averil says he suspected it last night; I did not see her yesterday in the after-part of the day. I have known some few cases precisely similar to Mrs. George Godolphin’s; where danger and death seem to have come on suddenly together.”
“And what is her disease?”
The surgeon threw up his arms. “I don’t know—unless the trouble has fretted her into her grave. Were I not a doctor, I might say she had died of a broken heart, but the faculty don’t recognize such a thing.”
Half an hour afterwards, the Reverend Mr. Hastings was bending over his daughter’s dying bed. A dying bed, it too surely looked; and if Mr. Hastings had indulged a gleam of hope, the first glance at Maria’s countenance dispelled it. She lay wrapped in a shawl, the lace border of her nightcap shading her delicate face and its smooth brown hair, her eyes larger and softer and sweeter than of yore.
They were alone together. He held her hand in his, he gently laid his other hand on her white and wasted brow. “Child! child! why did you not send to me?”
“I did not know I was so ill, papa,” she panted. “I seem to have grown so much worse this last night. But I am better than I was an hour ago.”
“Maria,” he gravely said, “are you aware that you are in a state of danger?—that death may come to you.”
“Yes, papa, I know it. I have seen it coming a long while: only I was not quite sure.”
“And my dear child, are you——” Mr. Hastings paused. He paused and bit his lips, gathering firmness to suppress the emotion that was rising. His calling made him familiar with death-bed scenes; but Maria was his own child, and nature will assert her supremacy. A minute or two and he was himself again: not a man living was more given to reticence in the matter of his own feelings than the Rector of All Souls’: he could not bear to betray emotion in the sight of his fellow-men.
“Are you prepared for death, Maria? Can you look upon it without terror?”