'You have been a good daughter to me—better than I deserved. I shall tell your mother so when——'
'Oh, Ethel, he has told her now! be comforted, darling,' cried Mildred, when Ethel had thrown herself dry-eyed on her friend's bosom. 'God do so to me and mine, as you have dealt with him in his trouble.'
But for a long time the afflicted girl refused to be comforted.
Richard was smitten with dismay when he saw her for the first time after her father's death. Her paleness, her assumed calmness, filled him with foreboding trouble. Mildred had told him she had scarcely slept or eaten since the shock of her bereavement had come upon her.
She had come to him at once, and stood before him in her black dress; the touch of her hand was so cold, that he had started at its clamminess; the uncomplaining sadness of her aspect brought the mist to his eyes.
'Dear Ethel, it has been sudden—awfully sudden,' he said, at last, almost fearing to graze the edge of that dreary pause.
'Ah! that it has.'
'That afternoon we had both been sitting with him. Do you remember he had complained of weariness, and yet he would not suffer us to wheel him in? Who would have thought his weariness would have been so soon at an end!'
She made no answer, only her bosom heaved a little. Yes, his weariness was over, but hers had begun; her filial work was taken from her, and her heart was sick with the sudden void in life. For months he had been her first waking and her last sleeping thoughts; his helplessness had brought out the latent devotion of her nature, and now she was alone!
'Will you let me see him?' whispered Richard, not daring to break on this sacred reserve of grief, and yet longing to speak some word of comfort to her stricken heart; and she had turned noiselessly and led him to the chamber of death.