"One came, and accompanied him to the hospital. But he said nothing could be done."
"Did he speak?"
"Not once; but he opened his eyes and looked around, as if seeking something. I said 'Grace,' and then a light came to his eyes, but otherwise there was no recognition. I hardly think he knew me."
"I had his blessing before he left me, thank God!"
Silence fell upon them, and Grace sobbed softly now and then. She thought of the grave under the elms, and of the meeting of those two—those to whom she owed her being—and then of her own lonely heart left behind to drag out its weary vigil. Her self-possession was returning, and when she reached the hospital, it was no wailing, unconscious maniac whom they led to the couch of the calm sleeper, but a grave, silent woman, wrapped in the majesty of sorrow, armed with the shield of peace. She stood a few moments steadfastly by the bed, then dropped on her knees, and kissed the white, still hand. A gash had scarred the high, broad forehead, but its horror had been obliterated as much as possible, and she felt no shrinking. Her long, piercing gaze had made her more strangely calm; a half-smile came to her lips as she thought of the shuddering girl who had stood in formless terror, trembling at every shadow, a few hours since; she could hardly believe that it was herself, so much had the reality of awful grief sobered in her the wild instincts of dimly perceived danger. The blow had come, and with it the grace; the balm had been poured in almost by the same hand that had dealt the wound, and the burden laid upon her had found more than strength enough whereon to rest and weigh. Crushed she might be, but had not the same silent teacher she gazed upon now been as crushed as she by a widely different yet kindred loss, and had not his soul risen again from under the flail with ten times more sweetness in its fragrance, and more strength in its tempered fibre?
She turned and whispered to Edmund. He inclined his head, and, speaking authoritatively, said to the bystanders that the body must be, at Miss Seymour's wish, carried to her lodgings. She then left, and he accompanied her home, promising to return with her father's corpse.
In a short time muffled steps and hushed voices were heard, and the strong man was borne again to the home he had left so cheerfully only a few hours before. Edmund and Grace were alone. All night through they watched, and a few candles burned round the sleeping form. Towards the gray of the morning, when common sounds began to be heard again, and the city woke up once more to its never-intermitted round of strange, wicked, checkered life, the girl, rising and kissing the brow of her dead father, turned to Edmund with a sad look of inquiry.
"Edmund," she said slowly, "you never told me what struck him."
"An iron bar," he answered, with a frightened, startled look. She gazed full in his eyes.
"I do not believe," she said calmly, with sad reproach trembling in her voice, "that you have told me untruly, for that you could not do; but, through kindness and compassion, I know that you have not told me all."