But the peace and joy beaming from those dying eyes told him more eloquently than any words what it meant to her, and he bowed his head and stifled the groan which rose to his lips as he realised that, despite their tender love, they had yet lived so far asunder in spirit that a great gulf already seemed to divide them. Yet the wife would not suffer herself to be long sundered in spirit from her husband; and when the two clergymen had silently departed, having done all that they could, each in his own way, she summoned him to her bedside by a glance, and brought her mind back to earth again with something of an effort. “My dear, dear husband,” she fondly whispered; and then the groan would have its way, as he took her hand in his and dropped down into the seat beside the bed which had been his for so many long hours during the past days. The Duchess bent her head softly towards the other side where her daughter knelt, and said in a low voice-- “My child, I would be alone with your father a brief while. Leave me for one short half-hour, then you shall return, and I will send you away no more, my patient darling.” The words of tender endearment brought a rush of tears to the girl’s eyes, but she rose without a word, and slipped noiselessly from the room. The mother looked after her with wistful eyes. “Husband,” she said softly, “you will be tender with the child? You will let her take my place with you so far as such a thing is possible. She will try to do her duty by you and by all. You will let that duty be a labour of love?” “I will do what I can; but I am old to change my ways, and I do not understand young girls. No one can take your place; you talk of impossibilities. O Geraldine! Geraldine! it is too hard to be thus left, old and stricken, and alone. Why must it be?--you so many, many years younger than I. I never thought to be the one left behind. I cannot be resigned. I cannot be willing to let you go. The Almighty is dealing very bitterly with me!” “Dear husband, the parting will be the shorter that you are well stricken in years,” she answered gently, answering him according to the measure of his understanding and feeling. “It will be but a few short years before we meet again in the place where there is no parting. And now, my husband, before I am taken away from you--before this new strength, which, I believe, God has given me for a purpose, be spent--I have a few things to say to you--a few charges to give to you. Will you let me speak from my very heart, and forgive me if in any sort I pain and grieve you?” “_You_ pain or grieve me by any precious words you may speak! That thing is impossible. Let me know all that is in your tender, noble heart. It shall be the aim and object of the miserable residue of my days to carry out whatever you may speak.”