drive without assistance. Sylvia never spoke,
and I had to take the blame upon myself.

At the first, Sylvia was a capital nurse. She
herself brought my breakfast-tray every morning,
and I had to warn her that my father and
Luke must be waiting for their second cups of
tea before I could get her to leave me and
return to the breakfast-table, over which she had
now to preside. She would spend her day
reading and talking to me, learning old Border
song's from Elspie, who was in this way much
conciliated. More than I loved to see her
gliding about the room. Dr. Strong, our
Streamstown physician, who came, of course, to
mend my broken bones, was completely
captivated by her ready hand and light step, even
more than by her beauty and radiant health,
which last advantage has always an especial
charm for a doctor. I soon saw that, conscientious
as I knew him to be, he took on this
occasion more interest in the nurse than in the
patient.

But very soon Sylvia left off her nursing, and
let me gradually drop wholly into the hands of
faithful Elspie and my kind little friend Miss
Pollard, whose name I think I have before
mentioned at the beginning of this history, and who
came often now to beguile my pains by reading
aloud her favourite poems in her chirping little
voice, or detailing to me the gossip of the
village and country-side, while she sewed
indefatigably at wondeiful prodigies of fancy-work,
which were destined for remote bazaars. She
was not so pleasant a companion as Sylvia. It
was not so delightful to look at her or hear her
talk. But her voice had a tremulous echo that
reminded you of a child or a bird, and her simple
face was not uncomely. Albeit a spinster, she
wore a widow's cap over her smooth, sand-
coloured hair.

"It looks more comfortable, my dear," she
said to me once, in an explanatory way, "much
more comfortable, when a single woman begins
to get a little up in years."

She could only have been forty, or there-
abouts, though I had long looked upon her as a
perfect rock of ages. Her eyes were very mild
and kind, and her mouth had shaped itself into
a little round button, by dint, I always thought,
of chirping to the canaries that lived with her
at home.

Sylvia gradually gave me up. Where she
passed her time, or what she did with herself, I
could not guess. Instead of bringing my breakfast
she would just flash in on me for a minute
in the morning, looking lovelier and gladder
than I had ever seen her, shake out her fresh
cambrics before my glass, and rearrange the
moss-rosebud in her bosom, then wander to my
bedside, give me an absent kiss, and slip out
again before I had more than time to say good
morrow.

At different times during the day she would
come in again, but she was restless while she
stayed, moving about the room like something
caged, and scarcely seeming to breathe freely till
she got away again. Once she did bring out a
child's frock, that we had left unfinished, and
began to sew, but after stitching the hem of the
skirt on to the waist she bundled it away
impatiently, and it saw the light no more. Another
time she opened a book to read to me as of old,
but she made so many ridiculous blunders, that
at last she laughingly shut the book, saying, "I
really do not know what I am reading." One
evening she slipped into the room, knelt beside
my couch, laid her head on my pillow, and lay
gazing up at the ceiling, with a blissful light on
her face, every now and then giving a long-
drawn sigh.

"Sylvia dear," said I, "what can be making
you so happy in this lonely place? What are
you doing with yourself?"

"Doing?" she echoed, starting up with a little
warbling laugh. "Mattie, I am doing a great
deal."

Then she suddenly began to talk to me about
her own past life. She spoke of the bitterness
of the four years that had gone over her head
since her father's death, not since Dick's death;
she did not mention him. Since her father's
death. She described to me the happy life she
led in her cottage home at Richmond, where
Dick and others came and wooed her, then in
her nineteenth year. She was vain, she said,
and worldly, and deserved no better fate than
befel her. Her father, a veteran officer, died,
and left her destitute. No strong hand was
near to help her. Nothing was left her but
such wit and good looks as she had, whereby
to win a dependent's bread at a stranger's
table. She opened a little pocket-book and
showed me a lock of her father's grey hair, and
a dried vine-leaf off her cottage walls.

"Poor Sylvia!" said I, as she stroked the
little treasures in her lap; and I felt puzzled
the while in my own mind.

''Not so poor!" said she, softly, looking as
happy as a queen, and then my words had to
come out.

"Sylvia!" said I, "will you answer me one
question truly? Did you ever love my brother
Dick?"

She glanced away startled for a moment, and
then, after a long pause, turned her shining
grey eyes upon my face, and said:

"I shall have to make you another confession
before long, and I had better make this one
beforehand. I never did love your brother;
not as I could love my husband. I liked him,
for he was a kind good fellow; but at the time
I promised to marry him I loved another better.
Ay, you may turn from me in disgust, Mattie.
I told you before that I was vain and worldly;
but at least I was an obedient daughter to my
father, who liked your brother, and who
considered him a better match, as they say, than the
person I cared for more. Such things as this
are not uncommon, Mattie."

I shrank a little, feeling as if the bright grey
eyes pierced me through with these words.
Truly such things were not uncommon. I gave
a sigh to my dead brother, and Sylvia went on
talking.

"I should have been a good wife to Dick if
he had lived. I could not marry any one unless