The Reaping by Mary Imlay Taylor

AFTERWARDS Rose never quite knew how she endured the voyage home. Her love for her father was so deep, so tender, they were so bound together by a hundred ties not only of affection but of sympathy and tastes and interests, that the very thought of losing him almost broke her down. It took both Cousin Emily Carter and old black Aunt Hannah to comfort and sustain her during those ten days.

But when she reached Washington Allestree met her at the station with good tidings; the judge was out of danger. He had been very near death and came back slowly from the Valley of the Shadow. However, he had come back and Rose knelt beside his bed and cried her heart out with joy to feel his arm around her. How pale and thin and wasted he looked. He had aged so much; poor Rose, she saw it and forced a smile to disguise it even to herself. But he was unaware of the shock which the sight of him gave her, and he forgot his illness in his eager interest in her account of Paris and her final success. She told him very little of those long months of struggle and depression, of the thousand little pinches and trials that they had been through to keep from asking an extra penny from him.