clasped together, as they listened to these words, which seemed to embody the halfformed emotions of awe and fear that possessed them. Clinging closely to each other, they stole back in shuddering silence to the room they had quitted, and almost screamed when a few minutes after the door from their father's room was softly opened.

It was Dr. Willis who appeared, and beckoned them to enter. They approached their father's bed. Even in the brief space of their absence a change had come over his countenance-a strange and unaccustomed expression. His. eyes were fixed upon them as they bent over him with a gaze of unutterable love and sorrow.

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"Kiss me, my darling girls," said the dying man. "God bless you, my dear, good, dutiful children! God bless and tect you! My poor Arthur! my little Marion! If I could but have seen them again! But His holy will be done! will give them my blessing, Jane."

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These were the last connected words au

dible to his sobbing daughters. He lay back upon the pillows of his bed, his eyes half closed, the last dread sound-the death rattle-already beginning in his throat.

"Let us pray!" said the voice of Dr. Willis. Jane and Lucy dropped upon their knees by the bedside, and without the halfopened door of the dressing-room Mr. Stanley's old faithful valet, Mrs. Peters, and Jones, were seen kneeling, while the solemn commendatory prayer for the dying arose from the chamber of death to speed the departing soul.

The service closed in a stillness only broken by the half-suffocating sobs of the two sisters. Suddenly the dying father sprang up erect, his eyes fixed upon some object which appeared to be visible to him at the foot of his bed, his arms outstretched, and his whole countenance illuminated by a smile of the most ineffable rapture.

"Arthur!" he exclaimed in a clear and joyous voice. And even as the beloved name escaped his lips, his arms dropped, he fell gently back, and expired without a struggle.

The wedded happiness of Arthur and Marion Stanley-happiness in each other as perfect as ever was bestowed on humanity -had been, if possible, confirmed and strengthened within a year after their marriage by the birth of a son; the intelligence of which event reaching Helmsley about two months previous to the death of Frederic, had caused the last strong emotion of joy and thankfulness which had visited the hearts of any there. But five or six weeks before the fatal termination of Mr. Stanley's illness, a letter had arrived from poor Marion addressed to Jane, announcing the death of her baby after a few days' illness. These tidings the medical men in attendance

strongly urged upon Jane the necessity of concealing from her father. Even then they did not hide from her how faint were their hopes of his restoration to health; and, as they truly said, it would be a needless pang to inflict upon him. He died in ignorance that his infant grandson had been recalled from the parents who for five happy months had so rejoiced in his dawning loveliness, intelligence, and apparent strength; but many a tear did Jane and Lucy shed over Marion's touching detail of the illness and death of her little darling. She told how she and Arthur had sat beside his cot when all hope was over, and watched the film of death stealing over those sweet blue eyes which had looked so brightly and lovingly into theirs, and kissed the soft cheek so often pillowed on their hearts, and with each kiss felt it become colder and colder, till all was over, and the pure spirit gone back to God; and how they had watched all night beside

his little coffin weeping and praying for grace to resign him without murmuring; and in the morning had taken the last look, the last kiss, and parted with him for ever in this world. She described the desolation of the house, the horrible stillness, the blank around her; the wandering into her baby's room, with a vague expectation of something to relieve the craving sense of want at her heart; and the start, the shock, the horrible tide of recollection awakened by the sight of the empty cot. She told how she had collected and put by with her own hands everything belonging to him--his clothes, his little playthings, the veriest trifle connected in her mind with him, and how she did it with dry eyes that could not shed a tear, and a choking sense of suffocation at her heart, till she came upon a rattle with which she had been amusing him the day before his fatal illness began, and at the sight of it her baby's smiling face as he hid