She was taller, more slender, but her carriage possessed a grace and
elegance a thousand times finer than before. Her eyes were filled with the
strangest sweetness, and swam with tears as she gazed at me.
"Papa has been waiting impatiently for you, Mr. Cleave," she said, in a
low, sad voice; "will you come up and see him at once? he is very ill."
And turning away her head, the fair girl burst into uncontrollable sobs,
every one of which went to my heart. I begged her earnestly not to yield
to her distress, and she soon dried her eyes, and led the way into the
parlor, where I was received by Mrs. Barrington, still cold and stiff, but
much more subdued and courteous. Annie went to announce my arrival to her
father, and soon I was alone with the old man.
I was grieved and shocked at his appearance. He seemed twenty years older.
I scarcely recognized in the pale, thin, invalid, the portly country
gentleman whom I had known.
The motive for his letter was soon explained. The executorial accounts,
whose terrible disarrangement I had aided, five years before, in
remedying, still hung over the dying man's head, like a nightmare. He
could not die, he said, with the thought in his mind, that any one might
attribute this disorder to intentional maladministration--"to fraud, it
might be.
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