Katey closed her eyes. She was so weak that this little scene exhausted and confused her. So Delphine was here! And she had been ill! Slowly her awakened thoughts traveled back to the point where forgetfulness began. Then she hid her face among the pillows.

Delphine came presently and fed her with broth, and bade her go to sleep like a good child. She could hear the girls whispering outside the door, where Clary had gone; but even this died away upon her ear, and she lost herself again. How long a time passed she did not know. She slept and woke, and slept and woke again. Sometimes it was daylight upon which she opened her eyes, and sometimes a soft glimmer, as from a shaded lamp, filled the room; and all the while she was slowly coming back to herself. How far she must have wandered in the darkness!

Her mind was growing clearer. The past rose up before her, as it might perhaps in the day of judgment, when every secret thought as well as deed would stand revealed. It had been all a lie from the beginning, she knew. He had come to her with a vow to another woman upon him. He had allowed himself to fall into temptation. He had been too weak to go away when safety lay only in flight. She herself had led him on. Unwittingly, she had been a snare to him, knowing nothing of the truth. She could see now how he had struggled, weakly. "I am your bitterest enemy," he said. Her bitterest enemy! And yet she did not hate him. At this very moment, when she knew how false he had been, she felt that if he but stood in the door and beckoned, she should rise and follow him. Oh, he must not come ; she must never see him again. He could be nothing to her; she must forget him. That would have been easy to do once; but now could she ever untangle these threads which had knit together the two lives?

Delphine, in her rich, dark dress, with pretty shining ornaments about her neck and at her ears, sat by the little table holding a lamp, knitting a hood of soft white wool. She rose hastily when Katey moved among her pillows.

"How good it was in you to come!" said Katey, stroking her hand, when she had submitted to being fed, like a baby, with a spoon. Poor Katey! Something had dropped out of her life, leaving it empty and bare. It seemed all at once as though the world were cruelly cold. The least kindness was a surprise.

"Of course I should come! What do you mean, child? I am thankful your illness occurred when it did, and not a month later, after we had gone. You don't know how sick you have been, Katey." Delphine's voice quavered.

over her work.

"Did Jack know?”

She bent

"I wrote a dispatch for him one day, but Robert said we had best not send it, unless She did not finish the sentence.

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Nearly a fortnight." "Have-have I had any letters, do you know?" Her voice trembled, in spite of the effort to speak calmly.

"Yes; Jack and Josie have both written. You shall hear their letters to-morrow."

"And that is all,-you are sure? There might be some mistake."

Yes, O yes, that is all."

From whom did the child expect letters? thought Delphine, carelessly. It was a sick girl's fancy, and she spoke of something else. But Katey did not reply. With her face hidden in the pillow, she was trying to stifle the great pang of disappointment which Delphine's words had brought. And yet, why should she be disappointed? Only a moment before she had been alarmed lest he had written to her with tender words; and then where would her strength be? She must write to him at once; she could not rest or sleep again till this was done. If she could only throw her arms around Delphine's neck and tell her the whole story! But Delphine had been bitter in her denunciations of Dacre. would be far easier to make Jack her confidant. Still, what might not Jack do in his wrath?

It

"I am going out for a little while," Mrs. Estemere said presently, laying down her work. "I have an errand to do, and Miss Severance has kindly offered to go with me. Little Miss Luckiwinner will sit by you until I return. I shall caution her about talking too much."

So, after a few moments, Clary crept in to take her proud position beside the bed. Mrs. Estemere's step had hardly died away before Katey turned to her. "Raise my head a little, Clary, and bring my writing-desk to me.'

Clary stared in affright. Had Miss Earle lost her senses again?

"I want to write a letter," Katey explained.

"But you are not well enough. Mrs. Estemere said I was not to talk to you."

"I don't ask you to talk to me. Only bring me the desk. Please, Clary."

"Oh, I don't dare to," Clary replied, trembling with fright at her temerity, yet determined to be faithful to her trust. "You might be ill again and die," she gasped. "Oh, I cannot, dear Miss Earle; don't ask me to. Wait until Mrs. Estemere comes back."

But Katey preferred that Delphine should

know nothing of the letter. She had made her plan, counting upon Clary's weakness; but it had turned to strength. In vain she pleaded. Clary soon dissolved to tears, but, even in a liquid state, was firm. She resorted to reproaches, which poor Clary bore with no other reply than little sniffling sobs.

"Then I shall get it for myself," she said at last with determination, making a movement as though about to rise from her pillows.

Clary wrung her hands in despair. "Wait one moment. Will you not wait just one moment?" and she ran out of the

room.

Now was the time to execute her threat. But that was impossible, Katey knew. She was by far too weak. She had spent her little strength in the encounter with Clary. She could only lie quite still, crying weakly.

All at once Clary's little prim face, warmed into unusual life, appeared at the door. "Then you didn't get up?" she exclaimed, and the head disappeared again. Once more it showed itself. What was the girl trying to do? "I went down toto speak to somebody; and won't you please let him talk to you about it?" she said, confusedly. A taller form appeared behind Clary's little figure.

"May I come in?" and putting Clary aside, Professor Dyce entered the room.

"Miss Luckiwinner seems to think it an occasion demanding authority. What is this about writing letters?"

He came forward and took the hand lying upon the coverlet, holding the wrist

"Then Miss Luckiwinner and I will leave you for a few moments," and he ushered Clary from the room, closing the door, beside which Clary waited, however. The Professor paced up and down the hall, his head bent, his hands clasped behind him. Clary hearing no movement within the within the room ventured to leave the door and lean upon the window-sill at the end of the hall. The Professor paused before her.

"Well, Clary," and the strong, bright tone which he had used in the sick-room had left his voice," it's all a tangle, isn't it?" "What is, sir?"

"O, life, and everything."

"I-I don't know," Clary replied, bewildered.

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No, of course you don't; why should you?" he said, cheerfully. Then he rapped at Katey's door.

"I shall never do it again," burst out Katey with a little sob; too weak and miserable to realize how much her words revealed. Then she turned her face to the wall, and he went away. But Clary added another to her list of unanswered queries: why did a great light come into his eyes at sight of Katey's tears?

Delphine returned to find her patient quietly sleeping, and Clary ensconced in breathless, painful quiet in the great chair by the bedside. Evidently her commands had been carried out to the letter.

There was no opportunity at the time to recount the story of Katey's willfulness, and Clary, after turning the matter over in her small head, decided to say nothing about it. She kept her own counsel, since no harm followed. Katey even seemed better the next day; and wondered in her own mind if she ought to confess her misdeed. But that would involve telling the whole story, from which she shrank now. She was morbidly faithful, perhaps. But, because he had proved false, was she set free from every promise? They could never be anything to each other; but she would not turn against him, and tell everything she knew to his disadvantage. Then Delphine would divine at once the cause of her illness and would overwhelm her with pity and sympathy. Ah, no; it would be wiser and more easy to bury it all in her own heart.

When she was able to be moved Delphine carried her off to her own home. Jack and Josie had returned from their wedding journey, and were settled in the same town. Then, before many days Delphine had bade them all a cheery adieuthere were never any forebodings in her mind and sailed away with her husband and child for a year's absence. But Katey was by this time domiciled with Josie, where she was to remain for the present, and where rest and new scenes would bring strength and peace, if not forgetfulness. And so the winter passed away, and Spring came again.

What is this longing which possesses us all in the spring-time;-not for the distant future, but for the far away in the past. A vague regret, a shadowy remembrance tinctured with pain of loss. It comes to us like a fuller heart-beat in the midst of busy cares. It holds us for an instant, then is gone. Not a recollection, for we grasp at nothing; no picture rises before our minds. It is too brief, too

mystical for that. The rain drops upon the white stones under the window, and there falls upon heart and soul a sense of— what? Another patter of rain? When? and where? A sudden gust, and the breath of the salt sea is borne in upon us. Ah! we had almost grasped it, we had almost lived again. What? we know not. It is gone; only the pain still vibrates. Some tense, forgotten string within had been touched in passing.

Slowly the summer went by. The thread was broken at last. The thoughts which had sprung back continually to Dacre had learned to dwell upon other objects. He had never written. He had made no effort to overbear her decision or to excuse himself. From Minna Hauser she heard sometimes. Only once had she spoke of him; and then to say that Christine, hearing nothing, was anxious and alarmed. Long before this Katey had told Jack and Josie of her appearance upon the stage at the Junction, and given them an account of the Hauser family. Only Christine's love-story she had withheld; partly because it had been imparted to her in that most binding of all confidences, which asks no promise-and partly because it was so interwoven with her own brief romance. would, doubtless, come no other to her life. She looked forward without interest. The future, to be sure, was not now as it had been at first,—a great open sea, cold and gray, and crossed by no white-winged ships; the roads of her fancy led no longer to a high, blank wall. There were Jack and Josie, Delphine and her family,—they bounded her world; and there was her work; for work she must, or life would be unbearable. The summer was almost over, and she was going back to La Fayette. Professor Dyce had written a brief note to say that there had been many changes in the school, but her place awaited her if she chose to return. And she was going back. The dull routine was tedious, but it was work and ready to her hand. It would engross her mind; and she would do it conscientiously for want of a better, nobler mission. She had no ambition; she felt no call, such as comes to some women, to do great deeds. But the commonest duties well done confer nobility upon the doer, and it was work; she came back to that always. She should go on year after year, growing old and worn and white-haired in that little corner room looking down upon the Gothic porch of a church. People would pass in

Her romance! There