'I shall not leave you so; it is a mistake in grief to avoid contact with the world. The mind only gets sadder and deeper into its gloom of melancholy. If you could but sleep, child, a little.' 'Sleep--I feel as if I had been asleep for years; and it was this morning, you tell me--only this morning I had my arms round his neck--dead--my darling papa dead!' She started to her feet as if to go where the body lay under the now useless hands of the doctor, but would have fallen had she not clutched for support at Mr. Pentreath, who upheld and restrained her. The awful thought of her future loneliness now that she had thus suddenly lost her father, as she had not another relation in the world, haunted the unhappy Dulcie, and deprived her of the power of taking food or obtaining sleep. In vain her old servants, who had known her from infancy, coaxed her to attempt both, but sleep would not come, and the food remained untasted before her. 'A little water,' she would say; 'give me a little water, for thirst parches me.' All that passed subsequently seemed like one long and terrible dream to Dulcie. She was alone in the world, and when her father was laid in his last home at Revelstoke, within sound of the tumbling waves, in addition to being alone she found herself well-nigh penniless, for her father had nothing to leave her but the old furniture of the house they had inhabited. That was sold, and she was to remain with the family of the curate till some situation could be procured for her. She had long since ceased to expect any letter from or tidings of Florian. She began to think that perhaps, amid the splendour of his new relations, he had forgotten her. Well, it was the way of the world. Never would she forget the day she quitted her old home. Her father's hat, his coat and cane were in the hall; all that he had used and that belonged to him were still there, to bring his presence before her with fresh poignancy, and to impress upon her that she was fatherless, all but friendless, and an orphan. The superstitious people about Revelstoke now remembered that in Lawyer Carlyon's garden, blossom and fruit had at the same time appeared on more than one of his apple-trees, a certain sign of coming death to one of his household. But who can tell in this ever-shifting world what a day may bring forth! One evening--she never forgot it--she had been visiting her father's grave, and was slowly quitting the secluded burial-ground, when a man like a soldier approached her in haste. 'Florian!' She attempted to utter his name, but it died away on her bloodless lips. CHAPTER XVI. ''TIS BUT THE OLD, OLD STORY.' A poet says: 'Not by appointment do we meet delight And joy: they need not our expectancy. But round some corner in the streets of life, They on a sudden clasp us with a smile.'