That interview is over! Again I am banished from Lilian's room; the
agitation, the joy of that meeting has overstrained her enfeebled nerves.
Convulsive tremblings of the whole frame, accompanied with vehement sobs,
succeeded our brief interchange of sweet and bitter thoughts. Faber, in
tearing me from her side, imperiously and sternly warned me that the sole
chance yet left of preserving her life was in the merciful suspense of the
emotions that my presence excited. He and Amy resumed their place in her
chamber. Even her mother shared my sentence of banishment. So Mrs.
Ashleigh and I sat facing each other in the room below; over me a leaden
stupor had fallen, and I heard, as a voice from afar or in a dream, the
mother's murmured wailings,

"She will die! she will die! Her eyes have the same heavenly look as my
Gilbert's on the day on which his closed forever. Her very words are his
last words,--'Forgive me all my faults to you.' She will die! she will
die!"

Hours thus passed away. At length Faber entered the room; he spoke first
to Mrs. Ashleigh,--meaningless soothings, familiar to the lips of all who
pass from the chamber of the dying to the presence of mourners, and know
that it is a falsehood to say "hope," and a mockery as yet, to say,
"endure."

But he led her away to her own room, docile as a wearied child led to
sleep, stayed with her some time, and then returned to me, pressing me to
his breast father-like.

"No hope! no hope!" said I, recoiling from his embrace. "You are silent.
Speak! speak! Let me know the worst."