The confidence with which he spoke to me was strange. I scarcely could understand--perhaps his weakness had some share in it, perhaps my absence, and it was the first time I ever had been absent from home--had inclined his heart towards his only child, and perhaps he could not help those audible wanderings of his thoughts, as strength and life failed him, and he gathered all his powers to his heart to keep his identity--to be himself. When he was awake I saw his eyes, I scarcely could believe in what was coming; but when he slept, I thought I could see moment by moment how the current ebbed and ebbed away. During one of these intervals of sleep, the doctor came in, and with him Mr. Osborne. With that practised scientific eye, which it is so dreadful to mark for our dearest ones, the doctor looked at him, and shook his head. He was lying so solemnly with his closed eyes, and not a movement in his frame, so pale now, so feeble, so perfectly at rest, that a pang of momentary terror struck to my heart; but he was not gone. He did not wake till the doctor had gone away, and Mr. Osborne was left standing beside me. I never raised my head, nor greeted him. I did not answer his whisper of satisfaction at finding me here--even by my father's bedside. I would not meet as a friend a man who had wilfully snared and betrayed me. When my father opened his eyes, he saw his friend by his bedside; but his eyes were not so full nor so clear, nor so bright with life and intelligence as they had been--there was a change--he stirred nervously. "Ha! Osborne, my good fellow!" he said, "I am just setting out--any messages, eh? any word to--to--Helen." After he had said the name, a momentary color came to his cheek, he lifted his hand heavily, and drew it over his brow. "What did I say? am I raving? no, no, I know you all! stay here, Helen," the diamond on his finger had caught his eye--it was I whom he was calling by that name, and already his faculties failed to distinguish it from mine, "here," he repeated, trying to draw off the ring, "here--take it from me--wear it--wear it--'tis a misfortune--keep it till you die."