But the reflections of the unhappy man, whether of reproach, sorrow, or regret, were ended for the time by another phase in the ever-changing condition of the invalid.  In tones expressive of the deepest wretchedness, the daughter, once more arousing from the stupor of exhaustion, would piteously exclaim, in low, sad accents, whose inexpressible woe pierced the afflicted watcher’s heart as with scorpion daggers: 

“Gone! gone!—­gone without a parting word or look!  Gone, and my aching eyes shall behold him no more!  Gone, and the darkness comes over me!  Oh, this horrid gloom!—­this load on my heart!  Father!  Charles! why do you both leave me in this dreadful place?”

“Eveline, Eveline, my dear; your father is here; he has not left you; see, I am by you; give me your hand.”

“Did somebody call me?  Who is there?”

“It is I, my child, your father.  Come with me; let me lead you from this place.”

“Ah, it’s a strange voice!  I hoped it was dear father or Charles; but, no, no, Charles was driven away; he is gone forever!  Oh, my poor heart!—­and father, he has left me too:  they are gone, and I shall die here.  Oh, what will father say when he finds me dead?  Well, it is best that he is away, for now he will not know that he has killed me.  Poor, dear, kind father!  I would so much like to say farewell before I go.  It might be some consolation for him to know when I am gone that I love him still!”

Every word of these last sentences went to the father’s heart.  How strong must be that affection which could still cling to him so tenderly, though he had committed such an outrage upon her feelings with regard to another!  The distressed sire bowed his head and smote his breast.  Then he knelt down by the bedside and prayed.  It was the first prayer he had offered up for years; but, oh! how earnestly he suplicated that his child might be spared to him.  In his agonized pleading, so great was the commotion in his spirit and the emotions of his heart, that tears, the first that had bedewed his eyes since the death of his wife, streamed down his face.  May we not hope that his prayer was heard?  But the horrors of the sick room were not yet over.  Eveline kept sleeping and waking, or rather, she lay in a state of stupor or raved in a delirium of fever, with occasional intervals of quiet, which sometimes lasted for hours, and excited delusive hopes in the heart of the father, that she was better, only to plunge him again into doubt and fear when the fever fit returned.  He arose from his knees, and bending over his child, imprinted kiss after kiss, “with all a mother’s tenderness,” upon her brow and lips.  O, how rejoiced would he have been could those kisses have conveyed to her an understanding of his feelings at that moment!  How a knowledge of his affection would have gladdened her heart!  But, no; for all the return manifested, he might as well have pressed his lips to cold marble.  After a time, the fever returned in violence, and she resumed her distempered and broken discourse: