l garden, while Lady Mary was playing
to Phineas within. "How do you think she is looking?" asked the
father.

"Of course I see that she has been ill. She tells me that she was far
from well at Salzburg."

"Yes;--indeed for three or four days she frightened me much. She
suffered terribly from headaches."

"Nervous headaches?"

"So they said there. I feel quite angry with myself because I did
not bring a doctor with us. The trouble and ceremony of such an
accompaniment is no doubt disagreeable."

"And I suppose seemed when you started to be unnecessary?"

"Quite unnecessary."

"Does she complain again now?"

"She did to-day--a little."

The next day Lady Mary could not leave her bed; and the Duke in his
sorrow was obliged to apply to Mrs. Finn. After what had passed on
the previous day Mrs. Finn of course called, and was shown at once up
to her young friend's room. There she found the girl in great pain,
lying with her two thin hands up to her head, and hardly able to
utter more than a word. Shortly after that Mrs. Finn was alone with
the Duke, and then there took place a conversation between them which
the lady thought to be very remarkable.

"Had I better send for a doctor from England?" he asked. In answer to
this Mrs. Finn expressed her opinion that such a measure was hardly
necessary, that the gentleman from the town who had been called in
seemed to know what he was about, and that the illness, lamentable
as it was, did not seem to be in any way dangerous. "One cannot tell
what it comes from," said the Duke dubiously.

"Young people, I fancy, are often subject to such maladies."

"It must come from something wrong."

"That may be said of all sickness."

"And therefore one tries to find out the cause. She says that she is
unhappy." These last words he spoke slowly and in a low voice. To
this Mrs. Finn could make no reply. She did not doubt but that the
girl was unhappy, and she knew well why; but the source of Lady
Mary's misery was one to which she could not very well allude. "You
know all the misery about that young man."

"That is a trouble that requires time to cure it," she said,--not
meaning to imply that time would cure it by enabling the girl to
forget her lover; but because in truth she had not known what else to
say.

"If time will cure it."

"Time, they say, cures all sorrows."

"But what should I do to help time? There is no sacrifice I would
not make,--no sacrifice! Of myself I