"A complication of troubles, no one of them very serious, but all together, and at her age--" The doctor completed the sentence with a gesture. The next day Ethan stood with his cousins at the bedside. "I did not send for you," was Mrs. Gano's greeting. "No; Val did," volunteered Emmie, who had not been told the result of the doctor's consultation. "_Val_"--the sick woman raised her head--"you take a great deal upon yourself." She sank back exhausted. Val could not read in Ethan's eyes that he had abandoned hope. But the girl's heart was full of dread. She went softly out of the room. "Oh, grandma, you've hurt her feelings," said Emmie, gently. "Nonsense!" "I saw tears in her eyes. Think of Val crying!" "It's no great affair that one should cry now and then. Perhaps it's just as well that you've come, after all." She fixed a far from hospitable look upon her grandson. "I was about to write you. Leave us awhile, Emmeline." She closed her eyes as the girl went out, as if to summon strength. "I don't approve of the tone of your last letter to Val." Ethan stared. "Oh, she reads me parts still. She reads me a great deal. The tone of the later ones, especially the last--" She shook her head with a weak, slow movement. "I am sorry you think--" "We haven't time to waste being sorry; let us be different." With sudden energy she pulled out one page of a letter from under her pillow. "I haven't eyesight to read your shocking writing, my dear--" "No, no; don't try. I remember what you mean. I won't make fun of the Churchman in politics any more--not in my letters. I apologize to the bishop." "Oh, _that_"--she smiled--"that was rather amusing, though not in the best taste. No; what I mean was on the last page. Read from 'whom the gods love.'" "Do you mean this quotation?" "Yes." "'Life, though a good to men on the whole, is a doubtful good to many, and to some not a good at all.' Is that it?" "Yes. What's the rest?" "'To my thought it is a source of constant mental distortion to make the denial of this a part of religion--to go on pretending things are better than they are. To me early death takes the aspect of salvation.'" "Now I ask you, Can you find nothing better than that to say to a girl?" "It was not I who found it." "You say it's George Eliot. Well, she had too much sense to present that view to a young girl. She put it in a diary. If you've nothing better to put into yours, so much the worse for you. Don't you know there are two ways of interpreting 'whom the gods love die young'?" "Yes"--he smiled--"'young' when they die at eighty." And he looked at the living commentary. "Very well; it's a view to keep in mind. But it's not only occasional things like that that I deprecate in your letters; the letters themselves should cease." "Really." He drew himself up and returned her direct look, but the wasted face and sunken eyes struck compunction to his heart. "Very well," he said, soothingly.