ur careful minds. Clara at such times often
returned to her former habits of free converse and gay sally; and though
our four hearts alone beat in the world, those four hearts were happy.

One day, on our return from the town of Como, with a laden boat, we
expected as usual to be met at the port by Clara and Evelyn, and we were
somewhat surprised to see the beach vacant. I, as my nature prompted, would
not prognosticate evil, but explained it away as a mere casual incident.
Not so Adrian. He was seized with sudden trembling and apprehension, and he
called to me with vehemence to steer quickly for land, and, when near,
leapt from the boat, half falling into the water; and, scrambling up the
steep bank, hastened along the narrow strip of garden, the only level space
between the lake and the mountain. I followed without delay; the garden and
inner court were empty, so was the house, whose every room we visited.
Adrian called loudly upon Clara's name, and was about to rush up the near
mountain-path, when the door of a summer-house at the end of the garden
slowly opened, and Clara appeared, not advancing towards us, but leaning
against a column of the building with blanched cheeks, in a posture of
utter despondency. Adrian sprang towards her with a cry of joy, and folded
her delightedly in his arms. She withdrew from his embrace, and, without a
word, again entered the summer-house. Her quivering lips, her despairing
heart refused to afford her voice to express our misfortune. Poor little
Evelyn had, while playing with her, been seized with sudden fever, and now
lay torpid and speechless on a little couch in the summer-house.

For a whole fortnight we unceasingly watched beside the poor child, as his
life declined under the ravages of a virulent typhus. His little form and
tiny lineaments encaged the embryo of the world-spanning mind of man. Man's
nature, brimful of passions and affections, would have had an home in that
little heart, whose swift pulsations hurried towards their close. His small
hand's fine mechanism, now flaccid and unbent, would in the growth of sinew
and muscle, have achieved works of beauty or of strength. His tender rosy
feet would have trod in firm manhood the bowers and glades of earth--
these reflections were now of little use: he lay, thought and strength
suspended, waiting unresisting the final blow.

We watched at his bedside, and when the access of fever was on him, we
neither spoke nor looked at