Page 132 - Fairbrass

great joy of his life, and for it he daily
thanked Heaven ; but he could sec, now

that it was too late, that the double duty
that had been nis—the duty to his wife and

the doty to his father—might, but for his
obstinacy, have been performed. And now

it was all over. The inheritance that might
have been his and his children's had gone

from him with the fatherly love that he now
fell he had never really striven to retain.
Regrets, vain regrets !

When they reached the Big House all

was quiet, and the father, followed by
Fail biass, walked up the once familiar

staircase, and sought the room that in
bygone days had been his mother’s. There

it was, very much as he remembered it in
the days of his childhood —the bed by which
he had often knelt to say his prayers to her,

and on which he, not realising his loss, had

seen her lying dead ; the same pictures on
the walls ; the little knick-knacks on her
dressing-table with which he had idly played

while she, in her kindly earnest way, talked