During the whole of the morning Mrs Arabin and Mrs Grantly were with their father, and during the greater part of the day there was absolute silence in the room.  He seemed to sleep; and they, though they knew in truth that he was not sleeping, feared to disturb him by a word.  About two Mrs Baxter brought him his dinner, and he did rouse himself and swallowed a spoonful of soup, and half a glass of wine.  At this time Posy came to him, and stood at the bedside, looking at him with her great wide eyes.  She seemed to be aware that life had gone so far with her dear old friend that she must not be allowed on his bed again.  But he put his hand out to her, and she held it, standing quite still and silent.  When Mrs Baxter came to take away the tray, Posy’s mother got up, and whispered a word to the child.  Then Posy went away, and her eyes never beheld the old man again.  That was a day which Posy never forgot—­not though she should live to be much older than her grandfather was when she thus left him.

‘It is so sweet to have you both here,’ he said, when he had been lying silent for nearly an hour after the child had gone.  Then they got up, and came and stood close to him.  ’There is nothing left for me to wish, my dears;—­nothing.’  Not long afterwards he expressed a desire that the two husbands—­his two sons-in-law—­should come to him; and Mrs Arabin went to them, and brought them into the room.  As he took their hands he merely repeated the same words again.  ’There is nothing left for me to wish, my dears;—­nothing.’  He never spoke again above his breath; but ever and anon his daughters, who watched him, could see that he was praying.  The two men did not stay with him long, but returned to the gloom of the library.  The gloom had almost become the darkness of the night, and they were still sitting there without any light, when Mrs Baxter entered the room.  ‘The dear gentleman is no more,’ said Mrs Baxter; and it seemed to the archdeacon that the very moment of his father’s death had repeated itself.  When Dr Filgrave called he was told that his services would be of no further use.  ‘Dear, dear!’ said the doctor.  ‘We are all dust, Mrs Baxter; are we not?’ There were people in Barchester who pretended to know how often the doctor had repeated this little formula during the last thirty years.

There was no violence of sorrow in the house that night; but there were aching hearts, and one heart so sore that it seemed that no cure for its anguish could ever reach it.  ‘He has always been with me,’ Mrs Arabin said to her husband, as he strove to console her.  ’It was not that I loved him better than Susan, but I have felt so much more of his loving tenderness.  The sweetness of his voice has been in my ears almost daily since I was born.’