“Charlatan—quack—driveler—you lie!” cried the miser with livid lips, starting to his feet, and shaking his clenched hands in the physician’s face. “Die!—my daughter shall not die—she cannot die—the children of the rich never die—what would you have? Gold!—here is a bill for fifty thousand—save my daughter—ay, I will make it a hundred thousand—but save my daughter—poor, poor, poor Anne!” and his head fell, and rested upon his breast. The old man stood before us motionless, transfixed with grief.
“Mr. Cornelius.”
“Oh, I am sick with much sorrow! Lend me your arm? Did you not say something of twenty per cent?”
I led him away to his daughter’s chamber. As we entered, her face was turned toward us.
“Who said that my daughter was dead?” asked Mr. Cornelius.
Anne feebly smiled.
“We shall all spring upward from the ground, winged; and with a power which will bear us swiftly to the throne, which endureth forever and forever.”
I hastened to bear her father to her bed-side. The last breath had parted from her lips, and as he questioned her, and she returned no answer; as he called to her, and she called not back again, he fell upon her, and his moan filled the room.
“Gone! oh my daughter; my jewel of great price—the heir to all my riches—my second life! Is the breath of man unbought! Can no one bribe death? Is there joy in the cold grave? O, come to me, my child, and sleep in my bosom, and fare sumptuously every day.” And he drew much gold from his pockets, and heaped it upon the bed beside her, and wondered that she should die.
And the world wondered, also, that she should die. And idle curiosity poured in to look upon her dust; and was shocked, and shrugged its shoulders, and exclaimed—“what a pity! In the morning of life—and so rich!” And again the world forgot her year of mourning, and her gradual decay, and carried its thoughts back to the hours when that small, pinched face was radiant with health, and a new-found happiness; and laughter rang from those thin lips, and merriment sparkled in the closed eye, and whispered and coined suggestions, and said that “after all she was not the miser’s daughter, and had died suddenly with the coming of that certainty.”