“It served you right, for now you know how little Willie felt.”

The next day Mrs. Hamilton was much worse, and Lenora, who had watched and who understood her symptoms, felt confident that she would die, and loudly her conscience upbraided her for her undutiful conduct.  She longed, too, to tell her that her father was still living, and one evening when for an hour or two her mother seemed better, she arose, and bending over her pillow, said, “Mother, did it ever occur to you that father might not be dead?”

“Not be dead, Lenora!  What do you mean?” asked Mrs. Hamilton, starting up from her pillow.

Cautiously then Lenora commenced her story by referring her mother back to the old beggar, who some months before had been in the kitchen.  Then she spoke of the old porter, and the resemblance which was said to exist between him and herself; and finally, as she saw her mother could bear it, she told the whole story of her father’s life.  Slowly the sick woman’s eyes closed, and Lenora saw that her eyelids were wet with, tears, but as she made no reply, Lenora ere long whispered, “Would you like to see him, mother?”

“No, no; not now,” was the answer.

For a time there was silence, and then Lenora, again speaking, said, “Mother, I have often been very wicked and disrespectful to you, and if you should die, I should feel much happier knowing that you forgave me.  Will you do it, mother—­say?”

Mrs. Hamilton comprehended only the words, “if you should die,” so she said:  “Die, die! who says that I must die?  I shan’t—­I can’t; for what could I tell her about her children, and how could I live endless ages without water?  I tried it once, and I can’t do it.  No, I can’t.  I won’t!”

In this way she talked all night; and though in the morning she was more rational, she turned away from the clergyman, who at Lenora’s request had been sent for, saying: 

“It’s of no use, no use, I know all you would say, but it’s too late, too late!”

Thus she continued for three days, and at the close of the third it became evident to all that she was dying, and Hester was immediately sent to the hotel, with a request that the old porter would come quickly.  Half an hour after Lenora bent over her mother’s pillow, and whispered in her ear, “Mother, can you hear me?”

A pressure of the hand was the reply, and Lenora continued:  “You have not said that you forgave me, and now before you die, will you not tell me so?”

There was another pressure of the hand, and Lenora again spoke:  “Mother, would you like to see him—­my father?  He is in the next room.”

This roused the dying woman, and starting up, she exclaimed, “See John Carter!  No, child, no!  He’d only curse me.  Let him wait until I am dead, and then I shall not hear it.”

In ten minutes more Lenora was sadly gazing upon the fixed, stony features of the dead.  A gray-haired man was at her side, and his lip quivered, as he placed his hand upon the white, wrinkled brow of her who had once been his wife.  “She is fearfully changed,” were his only words, as he turned away from the bed of death.