"It's of no use, no use, I know all you would say, but it's too late,
too late!"

Thus she continued for three days, and at the close of the third it
became evident to all that she was dying, and Hester was immediately
sent to the hotel, with a request that the old porter would come
quickly. Half an hour after Lenora bent over her mother's pillow, and
whispered in her ear, "Mother, can you hear me?"

A pressure of the hand was the reply, and Lenora continued: "You have
not said that you forgave me, and now before you die, will you not
tell me so?"

There was another pressure of the hand, and Lenora again spoke:
"Mother, would you like to see him--my father? He is in the next
room."

This roused the dying woman, and starting up, she exclaimed, "See John
Carter! No, child, no! He'd only curse me. Let him wait until I am
dead, and then I shall not hear it."

In ten minutes more Lenora was sadly gazing upon the fixed, stony
features of the dead. A gray-haired man was at her side, and his lip
quivered, as he placed his hand upon the white, wrinkled brow of her
who had once been his wife. "She is fearfully changed," were his only
words, as he turned away from the bed of death.

True to her promise, Margaret came to attend her stepmother's funeral.
Walter accompanied her, and shuddered as he looked on the face of one