“Well, well, it is all right,” he replied. He never spoke more: in a few hours his spirit took its final flight.
It was late in the evening when the mournful intelligence of Mr. Levingston’s illness reached his children in New York. They instantly set forth to gain, if possible, his dying couch in time to obtain his blessing.
“Where is my father?” exclaimed Walter on his arrival at the mansion, rushing by his mother and sisters who had hastened to the door to meet them. “Lead me to my father,” said he, catching hold of Mary.
As she went toward the room, he rushed by her; and entered, closed, and locked the door. Mary stood without listening to his wild outbursts of grief.
In anguish he called upon him once more to speak to him. It was the lamentation of the prodigal yearning in vain to hear his father’s voice. It was the pleading of the wanderer who had returned with the hope of cheering his last days.
“Mary,” said a gentle, well known voice, “My beloved Mary, we meet with your father’s blessing resting upon us.”
In an instant she was in the arms of Edward James, and weeping upon his bosom. Walter Levingston at this moment entered the apartment.
“Did my father ask for me, Mary?” said he.
“Oh yes,” she replied, “often. Almost his last words were, ‘My son receive my blessing.’ And he told me to request you, Edward, to say to your father, ‘I die in peace with all men, and willingly entrust the happiness of my daughter to your son.’ ”
“Forever blessed be his memory,” said Edward. “Never shall his confidence be misplaced, or that daughter have reason to doubt my trust.”