and you would not be satisfied until the great
chintz-covered sofa with its soft cushions was
lifted out of its corner, and planted upon the
hearth, for me to lie there, watching you while
you were busy among your books; and many
times a day you read some sentence aloud, or
brought a volume to my side that I might look
over the same page, while you waited patiently
as my slower eyes and brain were longer than
yours in taking in the sense. Even when you
were away at the rectory—for during my illness
you had begun to spend your evenings there,
when you had no church duty—I sat in your
study, with your books about me, in which
there were passages marked out for me to read.
I lingered over getting well.

I was lying on the sofa one evening, wrapped
in my mother's white shawl, and just passing
into a dreamy slumber, when I heard you entering
from one of your visits to the rectory. I
cannot tell why I did not rouse myself, unless
it seemed to me only as part of a dream, but
you crossed the floor noiselessly, and stood
beside me for a minute or two, looking down—
I felt it—upon my changed face, and closed
eyelids. Had I been asleep I should never have
felt the light, timid, fluttering touch of your
lips upon mine. But my eyes opened at once,
and you fell back.

"What is it, Owen?" I asked you calmly,
for I felt as if by instinct that the caress was
not for me. "Why did you kiss me, Owen?"

"I wonder I never did it before," you said,
"you are so like a sister to me. I have no other
sister, Jane, and my mother died when I was very
young,"

You stood opposite to me in the bright fire-
light with a face changing and flushing like a
girl's, and a happy youthful buoyant gladness
in it very different to your usually quiet aspect.
As I looked at you the old pain returned like a
forgotten burden upon my heart.

"I am so happy," you said, crossing over the
hearth again, and kneeling down beside me.

"Is it anything you can tell me, dear Owen?"
I said, laying my hand upon your hair, and
wondering even then at the whiteness and
thinness of my poor fingers. The door behind
you was opened quietly, but you did not hear
it, and my mother stood for an instant in the
doorway smiling on us both; I felt keenly how
she would misunderstand.

Then you spoke to me, shyly at first, but
gathering confidence, of Adelaide Vernon. I
knew her well: a little lovely graceful creature,
with coquettish school-girl ways, which
displayed themselves even at church, though her
black browed and swarthy aunt sat beside her in
the rector's pew. While you spoke, growing
eloquent with a lover's rhapsodies, the fair young
face, with its pink and white tints, and soft dainty
beauty, rose up before me; and your praises
seemed to flood my aching heart like a wide
breaking in of water, which rolled desolately
against me.

I need not remind you of the opposition your
love met. Mr. Vemon was averse to marrying

his portionless niece to his poor curate of
Ratlingliope; but his disapproval was nothing to
the vehement rage with which Mrs. Vernon, who
had other views for Adelaide, set her face against
it. The rector came up to our house, and told
us—you remember?—with tears wrung from
him, proud and reticent man as he was, that he
dreaded nothing less than a return of that fearful
malady of madness, which had kept his wife
a prisoner for years under his own roof. There
was as bitter, but a more concealed resentment
in our own household, which you only felt
indirectly and vaguely. I learned now with what
a long premeditated plan your father and mine
had schemed for our marriage. Your poor
foolish love seemed to every one but yourself and
me a rash selfishness. Even I thought at times
that half Adelaide's love for you sprang from
pure contrariness and childish romance, just
feeding upon the opposition it met with. How
I smoothed your path for you; how, without
suffering the coldness of disappointment to
creep over me, I sought your happiness in your
own way as if it had been mine also; you partly
know. So we prevailed at last.

In spite of all my smothered pain, it was
pleasant to see you watch the building of your
little parsonage, the square red brick house
beside the church, with the doors and windows
pricked out with blue tesselated tile-work. It
was not a stone's throw from our home, and the
blue parlour saw little of your presence, and the
dust gathered on the books you had been wont
to read. But you would have me to share your
exultation. Whenever the large beams were
being fitted into your roof, or the cope-stones
built into your walls, or the blue tiles set round
your windows, I must look on with you, and
hearken to your fears lest the home should be
unworthy of Adelaide. All my sad thoughts—
for day after day you were setting your foot
upon my heart—I worked away in busy labour
at your house, and in wistful contrivances to
make the little nest look elegant and pretty
in the sight of Adelaide Vernon.

Your marriage was to be on the Tuesday, and on
the Monday I went down with you to the rectory.
The place had become familiar to you, all but
the long low southern wing, with its blank
walls ivy-grown, and with its windows opening
upon the other side over a wide shallow mere,
fed with the waters of a hundred mountain
brooks. They were Mrs. Vernon's apartments,
built for her during her protracted and seemingly
hopeless malady, for her husband had promised
her that she should never be removed from under
his roof. She kept them under her own charge,
rarely suffering any foot to enter them, and Mr.
Vernon drew me aside when we readied the
house, and implored me to venture upon making
my way, if possible, to his wife, who had shut
herself up in them since the previous evening,
and had refused to admit even him. I crossed the
long narrow passage which separated them from
the rest of the dwelling, and rapped gently at
the door, and after a minute's silence I heard
Mrs. Vernon's voice asking, "Who is there?"