As

smart blue coat, with a kind, miserable, beautiful face, who has spent the last three hours and a half in clasping and kissing a limp white hand, which, had its owner been possessed of consciousness, would hardly have lain with such passive meekness in his fond grasp. her eyes open he springs up joyfully to his feet and bends over her. I do the same. With a faint gesture of distaste she turns away from him to me, and speaks in a weak whisper:

"I-I-I-am at home, am I not?" "At home? Yes, to be sure."

"I-I-I am not married?" "No, not yet."

"I am so glad!"

Soon afterwards she relapses into unconsciousness. All that day, and most of the following night, she lies like a plucked snowdrop in January's sleety lap, reviving from one swoon only to fall into another. Towards midnight she grows better and sinks into a natural and healthy sleep.

"I wish you would change your clothes," I say to Charlie, in a whisper, as we stand staring at her with shaded light, "they look such a mockery" (touching the fine blue broadcloth). "Your poor bouquet, too."

"Not a very good omen, is it?" he says, with a melancholy smile, lifting with his finger the drooped and yellowed head of his gardenia. "Bah! who cares for omens? Only old women.'

"Only old women," repeat I, mechanically.

"She was not well last night," he continues eagerly, "was she? I told you she was not it accounts for her talking so oddly, does not it? It shows" (peering anxiously into my face) "that she did not mean any of the things she said, does not it?"

I

say, “Of

course," in a constrained voice, and try to turn away. "Stay," he says, laying his broad hand on my shoulder, "do not go; I want to talk to you. I say she was not quite herself when she woke up first, was she?-did not know what she was saying-meant nothing ?"

I know that I am lying, but I answer: "Oh dear, no! of course not!"

"Was it my fancy?" continues he, with a painful red spreading even to his forehead; "one gets odd notions, and these damned candles" (striking one viciously with his forefinger) "cast such deceptive shadows-but it seemed to me, Jemima, that she turned away from me, as if-as if she had rather not look at me. Did not she like my being here, do you think? She is so—so—maidenly ; she thought I ought to have staid outside ?"

"Nonsense," say I, shortly. "It is evident that you have never fainted; you do not understand how slow people's wits are in coming

back. I do not suppose that she knew you from me, or me from the doctor."

He does not answer. I can hardly expect my logic to be very convincing, seeing that it has not convinced myself.

"Riley is not in the least surprised at this," I say, nodding slightly towards our patient. "When I told him about her not eating and not sleeping it is my belief that she has not closed an eye for the last fortnight--he said that the only wonder was that it had not happened before."

66

Jemima," says the young fellow, turning me unceremoniously round so as to face him, while his eyes in their searching truth go through mine like swords, " tell me—I wish to know-what is it that has taken away her sleep and her appetite? Is it I?”

It is not, as I am well aware, but I maintain a stupid silence.

"Do not answer me," he says, with a sudden change of mood, pushing me away from him. "I do not want an answer; it was an idiotic question; this fuss and bustle have been too much for her, have not they? and the hard weather has tried her. She will be all right again when once we get quietly off, will not she? Jemima-I say, Jemima-do you think there is a chance of our being able to have it to-morrow?"

I shake my head. "I doubt it."

"The day after, then ?" (very wistfully).

I have not the assurance to say "Yes," and I have not the heart to say "No," so I say, "We will see."

CHAPTER XIX.

WHAT THE AUTHOR SAYS.

ALL the next day, Lenore lies in bed, weak and white-it does not take much to pull her down-and, for the most part, silent. She asks for no one; expresses neither regrets nor self-congratulations on the subject of her deferred wedding-lies with her face, gentle and innocent as any saintly martyr's-what falsehoods faces do tell!-on the pillow, crowned by a bright brown glory of hair-an aureole given her by nature, not martyrdom. She is not ill, neither well; very still, and only turning restive under doses of brandied beef-tea, repeated ad nauseam. There are few of the minor diseases that are worse than beef-tea and brandy. The following day passes in much the same way; but on the third morning Jemima enters cheerfully: Riley says you may get up."

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The communication does not seem to afford much satisfaction to the person to whom it is addressed. She turns her face away with a pettish jerk and hides it in the pillow.

"He says you may dress and come down as soon as you like." "As soon as I like?" repeats Lenore ironically; "that would be a long time off. Why may not I stay here?"-(stretching out her arms lazily). "I am happy. I like to lie here all day long; the noises of the house seem so far off, and your footsteps outside sound so gently. I like to listen to the clocks one after another, and count them as they strike. I feel nothing-I think of nothing. I have not been so happy for years.

"He says that staying in bed is very weakening." "Then I like being weakened."

"Nonsense! Please talk like a rational being.'

Never was toilet more slowly made than Lenore's-partly from weakness-for her illness, though brief, has told upon her; partly from a deep and innate unwillingness to return to the well and worka-day world. At length there is no evading the fact that she is fully dressed; not only fully dressed, but established in an arm-chair before Sylvia's boudoir fire: a banner screen between her face and the flame; novels, workboxes, point lace, a pug-everything that is necessary to make a rational woman's happiness-within easy reach of her hands. There is one other addition, without which, many rational women think happiness incomplete-a lover; and even he is not far off.

As a man's heavy step sounds muffled along the carpeted passage, as a man's fingers close on the door-handle, Lenore turns her head resolutely to the other side-like a child averting its face from the inevitable rhubarb and magnesia-and rests her cheek on the back of her chair.

He enters softly, and afraid even of breathing over-noisily, imagining she is asleep, stoops his waved gold head over her. He is soon undeceived.

I wish," she says, in a most wide-awake voice, opening her beautiful petulant eyes full upon him," that you would not come creeping in, in that creakily tiptoe way; nothing in the world fidgets me so much.”

He starts upright again in a hurry.

"It was a stupid trick," he says humbly, and then stops suddenly, afraid of rousing livelier wrath by further speech. As for her, she rolls her pretty pettish head from side to side, and affects not to see him. He grows tired at last, of standing with his back to the mantleshelf, silent, and says, with eager tenderness but in a rather frightened voice:

"You are better ?"

"Yes, I am better," she answers quickly; "at least, so they say; but I am still far from well-very far; it will be long enough before I am strong again, and—and-and-up to anything."

Riley says that there is nothing like-like change of air" (reddening guiltily).

"Riley is an old woman" (reddening too).

"Lenore!" throwing himself down on his knees, on the rug beside her, and in so doing, giving an unconscious buffet to the pug's black face, who forthwith departs howling, unheeded, and with his tail uncurled. "Lenore! why need we have half the county to see us married? Why need we put on smart clothes? Why cannot you come quietly to church with me to-morrow, in your common bonnet and shawl" (Scrope is unaware that shawls are, for the moment, extinct,)" with only the clerk to say 'Amen'?"

"Where is the hurry?" she asks, tapping her foot impatiently on the fender. "You talk as if we were two old people, each with a leg in the grave. Supposing that we put it off for a year, we should still probably have fifty to gape opposite each other in.”

"Even if we were sure of the fifty," he says gently, "I should still grudge the one; can one be too long happy?"

"I never heard any one complain of being so.'

"Do you like sickly women?" she says abruptly, apparently half softened by his tone and looking amicably at him. "I think I am radically sickly-see how half a day has pulled me down-my elbows stick out like promontories" (pulling up her sleeve to show one)" if you married me you would have to be always cosseting metrundling me about in a Bath chair, and measuring out physic in a spoon for me."

He is about to burst into a storm of protestations, but she interrupts him. 66 Do you know what Jemima said, that day, when I told her I was going to marry you?"

"No."

Well, she said it was indecently soon."

"I do not see what business it was of Jemima's," says the young man, looking rather surly.

"Neither do I; but all the same it is true-indecently soon-that is the very word that expresses it." As she speaks, her face becomes spread with a hot blush, and his own is not slow to repeat it in the deeper colours of manhood.

"What does this mean?" he asks, rising to his feet, while a look of utter fear makes the red in his cheeks give way. "What is this the preface to? Is it indecently sooner than it was yesterday, or the day before, or the day before that?"

"Do not be angry," she says deprecatingly, hand on which his own diamonds are flashing. always reasonable-you always mind what I say, reasonable; that is why I like you."

stretching out her "You know you are even when it is not

There is something of the turkey-cock about every woman; gobbling and swelling if a man is frightened and runs; small and silent if he stands still and cries "Shoo!" It is his turn now; there is no use in gobbling at him; he affects not to see her hand, and only says briefly, "Go on."

"You know," she says, sitting upright in her chair and straining her neck backwards, so that her eyes may attain his face and watch it, "that I proposed to you-it is not a sort of thing that a man would be likely to forget. I try to think of it as little as possible, but it is true; and you accepted me;-I suppose" (laughing awkwardly)" that you could not well have been so uncivil as to do

otherwise."

"Go on."

"Well" (fidgeting uneasily), "I mean to marry you still—fully— but-but-it must be-not just yet-not now; a year-six months hence, perhaps instead.”

Unwilling to witness the effect of her words, she has dropped her eyes at the last clause; but as the moments pass, and no sound comes, save that of a cinder falling from the grate, she looks up again.

"Have you no tongue?" she says, irritably; "are you never going to speak?"

"That means never. Do you think I do not I have not watched it

"A year hence!" he says, in a low voice, turning a face, white as the face of the uncoloured dead, towards her. Thank you for leading me so gently up to it. see what you are aiming at? Do you think coming during the last fortnight? I have prayed not to see" (striking his hands together). "I have entreated God to let me be blind always. Good God!" (flinging his arms down on the chimneypiece, and hiding his face on them,) "how do men bear these things? Who can teach

me?"

"Bear what?" she cries, rising hastily to her feet and putting her hand on his coat sleeve. "What are you talking about? What is there to bear ?"

"So you have been tricking me all this time, have you?" he says, raising his ruffled head and looking deliberately at her, with a resentful calm in face and voice. "At least, it can hardly be called trickery: it was so lamely done, a child might have seen through the deception."

Silence.

"Of course you know best" (in the same polite, cold tone); "but would it not have been simpler, and come to much the same thing in the end, to have left me alone in the first instance ?"

Left him alone! The very question, in almost the same words, that Paul had once asked.

"I had gone clean away," he continues, in the same repressed and