He tried to speak.

They bent lower still to listen.

After several futile efforts he uttered one word: 

“Cora.”

“Yes, father—­she is here.  Go, Clarence, and fetch her at once.  She is at the ferryman’s cottage.”

The last sentence was added in a low whisper.  Clarence immediately left the room to do his errand.  A few minutes later the door opened softly, and Clarence re-entered the room with Cora.

Mr. Fabian went to meet her, saying softly: 

“He has called for you, my dear!  The only word he has spoken since he recovered consciousness was your name.”

“So Uncle Clarence told me,” she said, in a broken voice.

“Come to him now,” said Fabian, leading her to the bedside.

She sank on her knees and took the hand of the dying man and kissed it, pleading: 

“Grandfather, dear grandfather, I love you.  I am grieved at having offended you.  Will you forgive me—­now?”

He made several painful efforts to answer her, before he uttered the few disconnected words: 

“Yes—­forgive—­you—­Cora.”

She bathed his hand with her tears.  All on her part also was forgotten now—­all the harshness and despotism of years was forgotten now, and nothing was remembered but the gray-haired man, always gray-haired in her knowledge of him, who had protected her orphanage and given her a home and an education.  She knelt there, holding his hand, and was presently touched and comforted because the lingers of that hand closed on hers with a loving pressure that they had never given her in all her life before.  That was the last sign of consciousness he gave for many hours.

Mr. Fabian took the doctor aside.

“Ought I to send for my wife?” he inquired.

“Yes; I think so,” replied the physician.

And the son knew that answer was his father’s sentence of death.  Not one of the family could be spared from this death bed to go and fetch Violet.  So Mr. Fabian went down stairs to the library and wrote a hasty note: 

DEAR VIOLET:  You offered to come and help to nurse the father, who is sicker than we thought, but with no contagious fever.  Come now, dear, and bring baby and nurse, for you may have to stay several days.

    FABIAN.

He inclosed this letter in an envelope, sealed and directed it, and took it down to the stable, where he found his own groom Charles in the coachman’s room.

“Put the horses to the carriage again, and return to Violet Banks to bring your mistress here.  Give her this note.  It will explain all,” said Mr. Fabian, handing the note to the servant.

He found the same group around the death bed.  Clarence and the doctor standing on the left side, Cora kneeling by the right side, still holding the hand of the dying man, whose fingers were closed upon hers and whose face was turned toward hers, but with “no speculation” in it.  Two hours passed away without any change.  The sound of wheels without could be heard through the profound stillness of the death chamber.  Mr. Fabian again left the room to receive his wife.