"Only speak, say anything, if it was to curse me!" said poor Susan. It was impossible to believe that he could not if he would. And then one gleam of expression different from their usual strain of watchfulness appeared in Mr. Scarsdale's eyes; a strange gleam, as if tears were in them; a momentary melting of the hard heart, a wandering movement of the unparalyzed hand to lay it on her head. Susan hid her face, weeping aloud, the touch going to her heart as never tender father's blessing went, and her whole young soul heaving within her, at the thought how little she had loved him, he who relented over her and blessed her thus under the stony hand of death. Never in all his hard life had so sweet a gush of human gratitude followed any act of Mr. Scarsdale. It was well for him that it was his last. CHAPTER XXI. At that moment when Susan, full of tenderness and compunction, knelt by her father's bedside, and Mr. Scarsdale's hand still trembled upon her hair--token, all too late, of the love which might have been--the door of the room opened stealthily for a moment, and Horace looked in. Whether it was that Mr. Scarsdale had preserved the sense of hearing as distinctly as he seemed to do that of sight, or that a strange magic of hostility drew his eyes to that quarter, it is impossible to say; but when Horace's gaze fell upon the bed and its ghastly inhabitant, his father's eyes met his, with a look which all the world and all its pleasures could never efface from the young man's mind. He staggered back, startled out of all self-control, and uttering, in spite of himself, a cry, half of defiance, half of horror; while the unhappy father of these two children, thrusting, with the force of extremity, Susan's fair head away from him, swayed round, by a desperate impulse, his half-lifeless body, and turned his face to the wall. Startled out of her filial delusion, and with her faculties confused by the sudden thrust away, which was given with feverish force, Susan stumbled to her feet in sudden terror. Horace was standing ghastly pale by the door, his bloodless lips apart, his eyes dilated, his manner so frightfully excited and unnatural, that Susan's first impulse was to interpose the frail protection of her own body between the helpless father and the frantic son. As she stood alarmed, protecting the bed, Horace gave a ghastly sneer at her, and said, "Too late!" hoarsely out of his throat. He saw well enough that she was afraid of him, and meant to defend her father; but nothing in the world could have initiated Susan into the horrible meaning of that "too late." When she thought of it, she supposed her brother to mean too late to be recognized, to ask his father's pardon--perhaps to gain his father's blessing, as she had done; and with that idea her feeling changed.