The serene eyes opened, the smile became infinitely tender. "My little girl—leave me now. I am so tired, so weary. I shall be glad to sleep. Remember what I said. Kiss me." Nora obeyed. For one instant she lay like a child in the feeble arms, overwhelmed by a frightful forewarning of a pain she was yet to know in all its intensity. "Good night, my darling," Mrs. Ingestre whispered. Nora crept softly away. She thought that her mother had spoken from amidst her dreams and had forgotten that it was still daylight. Yet the tender farewell haunted her as she went downstairs, and it haunted her long afterwards, when the speaker’s face was obscured in the shadows of memory. She found her father in the old familiar dining-room, waiting for her. The months had made his shoulders more stooping, his manner feebler, more helpless. He looked so really wretched that she forgot her own grief and put her arms about him and kissed him. "What is she doing?" he whispered, as though they stood in the invalid’s room. "Is she asleep?" Nora nodded. "Yes; I think so. Our talking made her very tired." A groan escaped from the man’s quivering lips. "The doctor said we must be prepared any moment for the worst," he said. "It is awful—I can scarcely bring myself to believe that it is God’s will. How can I live without her?" "We must help each other. And we must make the last days happy." "Yes, yes; we must try," he agreed, beginning to pace restlessly backwards and forwards. "We must make her happy. Nora——" He stopped and looked piteously at her over his spectacles. "Nora, you think she was happy?" "Happy?" she echoed. Somehow, the thought of her mother’s happiness had scarcely ever occurred to her. "I mean—I have been thinking, since I knew that we were to lose her, that she would have been happier in another sort of life—that I did not think enough about her: I was always so busy with the poor and the parish. It is perhaps foolish of me. A man of sensitive conscience is liable to unreasonable remorse. I should be glad—I should be easier in my mind if you gave me your opinion." "Mother never complained," Nora said slowly. He nodded, as though her words had confirmed his protests against his own self-reproach. "No; she never complained," he said, with a sigh of satisfaction. For a moment he was silent, then he turned to her again. "I cannot tell you how glad I am that you are here," he went on. "Weeks ago, when your mother became so ill, I wanted to send for you both—you and Miles—but she would not let me. Miles worried her, and she did not want your first months of married life overshadowed. Those were her very words. It seems almost providential that this war should have brought you home in time." "What news is there?" she asked quickly. "Is it really declared at last?"