In a few words she told him how she had been aroused from her
sleep by her aunt, who said the baby was dying with the croup;
that the servant was timid and refused to go either for him or the
physician, and so she had come herself.
"And were you not afraid?" he asked; and the heroic girl answered,
"No; I fancied Ella was with me, cheering me on, and I felt no
fear."
Mr. Hastings made no reply, but, when lie reached the house, and
saw the white, waxen lace of the child, he felt that Ella had
indeed been near to him that night; that she had come for her
little one, who, with a faint, moaning cry, stretched its hands
towards Dora, as she entered the room. And Dora took it in her
arms, holding it lovingly there, until the last, painful struggle
was over, and the father, standing near, knew that wife and child
had met together in heaven.
At the foot of the garden, beneath the evergreens, where he had
wished to lay his other Ella, they buried the little girl, and
then Howard Hastings was, indeed, alone in the world--alone in his
great house, which seemed doubly desolate now that all were gone.
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