An intolerable longing for his presence came over her. Most bitterly she needed him now in this time of her sorrow, and terrible was the shame and misery of realising that her own pride had wrecked his happiness as well as her own. It was with difficulty that she could control her voice when Dr. Harford entered, and his all-observant eyes at once perceived that the sight of the miniature had been too much for her. “My mother,” she faltered. “I will come at once,” he said, taking her hand much as if she had been a child again. The action comforted her, and she told him of her uncle’s visit, and of how at first the invalid had revived and had seemed better. But when they reached the sick-room Hilary needed no words to tell her that her mother was at the point of death. There was a minute’s silence while the doctor felt the failing pulse; a courteous word of thanks for his care; a tender farewell to her child, and a grateful glance at her favourite brother as he knelt at the bedside. Then consciousness failed; and after an interval, broken only by the voice of Dr. Coke as he read the commendatory prayer, she passed quietly away. Hilary, dazed and tearless, let them take her out of the room unresistingly. The whole world seemed a blank to her, and her desolation was the more overwhelming because the one being who could have comforted her was, by her own fault, altogether out of reach. Her mother dead, her lover banished and rejected, and she herself crushingly conscious of her own sins and shortcomings, it seemed to her indeed that the burden of life was more than she could endure. Dr. Coke went at once to the Palace to break the news to the Bishop, but Dr. Harford returned to the withdrawing room for a minute, feeling ill at ease as to Hilary. He found her restlessly pacing to and fro, trying not to hear Durdle’s heavy footsteps as she moved about in the next room, busy with the last offices to the dead. “My dear,” he said, in his fatherly way, “you were up all last night and must rest now. Come,” and he himself arranged the cushions for her on the couch and insisted that she should lie down. “I wonder that you can endure the sight of me,” said Hilary, “after all the trouble I have caused you.” He thought that in calmer moments she might regret having spoken so openly, and did not allow himself to refer to Gabriel. “You forget that your father was my best friend, and that to be of service to you must always be a pleasure to me,” he said, kindly. “Try, if possible, to sleep, my dear; your uncle and I will make all needful arrangements.” “What is the use of resting?--all is over; no one needs me,” she said, wildly. “Nay,” he said; “be very sure that there will be need of all your strength in a country as full of sorrow as ours is now. So rest, my child, and wait.” And then he bade her good-bye, and went his way to comfort and cure others that were ill in body and sad of soul. CHAPTER XVI.