“The fingers that lay upon the coverlid moved spasmodically; he eyed me with a steady deepening stare, awful to meet, fearful to remember. I went on steadily; ‘She has gone out of this house with your curse; tell me that if she comes back, she may be greeted with your forgiveness.’ Still that awful stare which changed not. ‘I have watched and waited for her every day since her departure,’ I whispered, ‘and shall watch and wait for her, every day until I die. Shall a stranger’s love be greater than a father’s?’ This time his lips twitched and the grey shadow shifted, but it did not rise. ‘I had sworn to do it,’ I went on. ‘When you lay there at the top of the stairs, smitten down by your first shock, I told her, come sickness, come health, I should keep a daily vigil at that door of the house which your severity had not closed upon her; and I have kept my word till now and shall keep it to the end. What will you do for this miserable child of whose being you are the author?’ “With indescribable anxiety I paused and watched him, for his lips were moving. ‘Do for her?’ he repeated. “How awful is the voice of the dying! I shivered as I listened, but drew near and nearer, that I might lose no word that came from his stony lips. “‘She will not come,’ gasped he, with an effort that raised him up in bed, and deepened that horrible stare, ‘but—’ “Who shall say what he might have uttered if Death’s hand had delayed a single instant, but the inexorable shadow fell, and he never finished the sentence.