Fanny's Illness Leads to Her Father's Repentance

Dr. Gordon was finally called and pronounced her disease to be typhoid in
its worst form. Days went by, and so rapid was the progress of the fever
that Mr. Middleton trembled lest of him it had been decreed: "He shall be
childless." To Fanny the thought of death was familiar. For her it had no
terrors, and as her outward strength decayed, her faith in the Eternal
grew stronger and brighter, yet she could not die without an assurance
that again in the better world she would meet the father she so much
loved. For her mother she had no fears, for during many years she had been
a patient, self-denying Christian.

At first Mr. Middleton listened in silence to Fanny's gentle words of
entreaty, but when she spoke to him of her own death, and the love which
alone could sustain him then, he clasped her tightly to his heart, as if
his arm alone could keep her there forever, saying, "Oh, no, you must not
tell me that; you will not die. Even now you are better." And the anxious
father did try to deceive himself into the belief that Fanny was better,
but when each morning's light revealed some fresh ravage the disease had
made--when the flush on her cheek grew deeper and the light of her eye
wilder and more startling, an agonized fear held the old man's heart in
thrall. Many and many a weary night found him sleepless, as he wet his
pillow with tears. Not such tears as he wept when Richard Wilmot died, nor
such as fell upon the grave of his first-born, for oh, his grief then was
naught compared with what he now felt for his Sunshine, his idol, his
precious Fanny. "I cannot, cannot let her die," was the cry which hourly
welled up from the depths of that fond father's aching heart. "Take all,
take everything I own, but leave me Sunshine; she mustn't, mustn't die."