But meanwhile time was accumulating antagonistic forces which would explode in a consummation.  Her thoughts were to be occupied by another, who claimed her affections and care by an appeal as powerful as it was without guile.  Her father was seized with paralysis.  He was laid speechless on the bed where she sat, a watchful and affectionate nurse, ready to sacrifice sleep and peace and rest to the wants of him who, all through her life, had been her friend and benefactor, and who had provided for her future days at the expense of hopes entertained by his legitimate heirs.  For three days he had lain without speaking a word, and Rachel could only guess his wants by mute signs.  During all this time her thoughts had scarcely glanced at Walter.  He seemed anxious about the condition of his uncle, calling repeatedly at the bedroom door, and going away without entering.  But his manner indicated no affection, if it did not rather seem that he considered the old man had done his worst against him, and that sorrow was not due from one he had disinherited.  Her affections were too much engrossed by her patient to permit her thinking of what was being transacted in the outside world.  Yet, when she looked upon the face of the invalid, so pale and motionless, where so long the shades of grief and the lights of joy had chased each other, by the old decree of human destiny, the words of Paul would occur to her.  Was the death that was there impending the result of a more necessary law than that which had ruled every other condition of body or mind which had ever been experienced by the patient sufferer?  Then there came the question, Could Walter Grierson so regulate his heart as to force it to love her in preference to Agnes Ainslie?  Could she, Rachel herself, so rule her feelings as to cease loving the man she still suspected of falsehood and treachery?  It was even while she was thus ruminating over thoughts that made her tremble, that she observed, on the third night, a change in her patient.  He seemed to start by the advent of some recollection.  His body became restless, and he waved his hand wildly, as if he wanted her to bend over him, to hear what he might struggle to say.  She immediately obeyed the sign.  He fixed his eyes upon her, made efforts to articulate, which resulted only in a thick, broken gibberish.  She could only catch one or two indistinct words, from which it seemed that he wished to tell her where she would find the will; but the precise phrase whereby he wished to indicate the deposit was pronounced in such an imperfect manner that she could not make it out.  Strangely enough, yet still consistently with the generosity of her character, she did not like to pain him by indicating that she did not understand him.  Nay, she nodded pleasantly, as if she wanted him to be easy, under the satisfaction that he had succeeded in his efforts to articulate.  Yet so far was she from thinking of the importance of the communication to herself, that she flattered him into the belief that, as he could now speak so as to be understood, he was in the way of improving.  Alas for the goodness which is evil to the heart that produces it!