It was, I think, only a few weeks after this that my father called me to
his room. He was standing in his morning apparel, a strange garb which
he sometimes affected, made up of a black velvet gown brought together
at the waist by a stout yellow cord, a bright red skull cap, a sort of
sandal shoe, picked out with silver ornaments, his arms covered with
loose, puckered sleeves of lace, dotted with black extending up to the
close fitting sleeves of the velvet gown which only descended to his
elbow. Beneath the gown, when he was thus theatrically attired, he wore
a shirt of pale blue silk with a flat collar, over which came a black
vest meeting his black trunks and blue hose.

My father was a really striking and beautiful picture in his incongruous
habiliment. His strong and thoughtful face, over which yet clustered the
curly hair of boyhood, just touched with gray, lit up by his earnest,
sad eyes, seemed--how distinctly I recall it--almost ideally lovely that
morning, and I compared him in my thoughts with the father of Romola,
only as wearing a more youthful expression. He was seated when I came
in, and as his eyes encountered mine, I detected the traces of tears
upon his cheeks. My heart was full of love for my father, or childlike
adoration it might have been called. I hurried to him and embraced him.
The tenderness overcame his habitual self-restraint and he seemed to
fall sobbing in my arms.

"My son," he finally whispered, "my days are drawing very fast to a
close. The shock I experienced at Christ Church prepared me to believe I
would die in some attack of paralysis. A slight aphasia occurred this
morning. It, too, as suddenly disappeared. But these warnings cannot be
neglected. I and you must at once make preparations for that future
colloquy which we must endeavor to establish between ourselves, when I