That was out of the question, so I did my best
to comfort Jane; but the tears stood in her eyes
as she still kept sighing:

"Oil! why did he take him?"

Why, indeed? The child came home bright
and well, and his father seemed quite triumphant
at having kept him half a day away from his
step-mother.

"And he was not at all unhappy, Jane," he
said, with marked emphasis.

All day the child continued well and merry,
but next morning he felt sick, and by the
time his father came home at night he was ill;
he had the small-pox. It was I who told Mr.
Forbes. He turned dreadfully pale; he had
learned in the course of the day that the epidemic
was at Harting. It was there, and he had taken
his child to it; he had taken him to illness,
perhaps to death, just to brave and tease his poor
young wife! I knew all this passed in his mind,
for the first words he uttered were:

"God forgive me!"

His next remark was the question:

"Has Jane ever had it?"

"Never," I replied, gravely.

"Then she must not stay with him," he said,
quickly; " she must not."

He went up; I followed him to the nursery.
Jane was there bending over the little cot, with
Arthur's hand in hers. Mr. Forbes went up to
her; he was much agitated. He could scarcely
speak.

"Jane," he said, without looking at the child,
"you must not stay. I know you have never had
this complaint—you must not stay."

"Would you say that, if I were his mother?"
she asked.

"You have no right to risk your life," he
urged. "I have had it, so has your cousin."
(I am dreadfully pock-marked, reader.) " We
risk nothing; you risk much."

"What?" asked Jane, and my pale
sadfaced little cousin became for a while a glowing
and almost a beautiful woman; " what do I risk?
Life! It is not so dear, Mr. Forbes. Disfigurement!
What change for the worse would that
make in my lot?"

Mr. Forbes said not a word.

"I have had that child's love," continued
Jane, looking back towards the cot, " and
nothing, nothing, shall make me leave him!"

No more was said. Arthur moaned as he lay,
and Jane sat on one side of him, and her husband
on the other.

Three days they sat thus. Three days the little
sufferer lingered. On the fourth, an angel called
him and released him from his pain. I was
present when he died. That poor peevish little
fellow had become so patient and so meek in his
illness, that I, too, had begun to love him. My
heart smote me when I saw his eyelids flutter
strangely, and his pale lips quiver, and his little
face—it was neither blotched nor altered—take
the strange calmness of death. Jane wept
silently. Mr. Forbes was tearless, and sat looking
on like one turned to stone. At first he
seemed incredulous, but at length he understood
that it was all over. I do not think he saw me;
if he did, he forgot me. He turned to his wife.

"Jane," he said.

She looked, and did not move.

"Jane, come to me."

She rose, and went and sat on the couch by
his side. With a sudden moan, in which love,
remorse, and pain, seemed to mingle, he drew her
towards him. He laid his head on that kind
bosom where his child's head had so often rested.
It had been the refuge of all little Arthur's
troubles, and it now received the strong man's
passion of grief. Jane flung her arms around her
husband's neck and mingled her tears with his,
and whilst they wept together, the young and
innocent dead slept on and smiled divinely, with
closed eyes, at that fair world, without sorrow,
passion, or pain, which it had just entered.

I softly stole away, feeling that out of the
saddest grief good may come. Long after this,
Jane said to me:

"Cousin William, my husband gave me his
heart in that hour, and he has never taken it
back again."

"And never will, little Jane; for if there be a
fondly loved wife, you are that woman."

Jane had the small-pox; but her husband
nursed her through it, and she recovered quickly,
and was not at all disfigured. Happy Jane! I
saw her the other day when I called at the Elms
on my way to London. What a bright old house
it looked, now that Jane was loved and happy!
How proud Mr. Forbes seemed of his wife and
of their only child, a beautiful boy very like him
—need I say his name is Arthur? Well! Do
you know, fond though she evidently was of him,
I doubted if Jane loved this Arthur quite so
much as she had loved the other one? I told
her so.

"The first Arthur," she replied, " was the
child of my sorrow; the second Arthur is the
child of my happiness. Both could not be dear
after the same fashion. Besides, the other Arthur
loved me best, and this one prefers his father."

"And Annie?" I suggested; " what about
her?"

"I neither know nor care," replied Jane, with
superb indifference. "The dead Arthur makes
me feel secure in the past, and with the living
Arthur I can defy a dozen Annies."

Dear little Jane! She was just the same little
goose as ever. It was like her to think that her
hold on her husband depended on a dead or on a
living child. Mr. Forbes knew better. In the
fulness of his happiness, he told me the whole
story about " Annie," as he drove me to the
station. Of course he did not tell me who
"Annie" was; but he had seen her again at a
party, and he could not help saying:

"Cousin William, you cannot imagine what I
felt when I compared these two women—my
dear, pretty Jane" (pretty Jane! oh, love, love!),
"and that cold, shallow, frivolous woman! My