ared for all this. She had expected to be
comforted, and supported, and encouraged; and yet from herself now, all
the encouragement and all the support was to be derived! _She_ was to
infuse hope, to supply courage, and inspire determination. He was only
there to be sustained and supported. It is true she knew nothing of the
trials and difficulties which were before him, and she could neither
discuss nor lighten them; but she could talk of India as a mere
neighbouring country, the "overland" a rather pleasant tour, and two
years--what signified two years, when it was to be their first and
last separation? For, if he could not obtain the leave he was all but
promised, it was arranged that she should go out to Calcutta, and their
marriage take place there.

He rallied at last under all these cheering suggestions, and gradually
dropped into that talk so fascinating to Promessi Sposi in which
affection and worldliness are blended together, and where the feelings
of the heart and the furniture of the drawing-room divide the interest
between them. There was a dash of romance, too, in the notion of life in
the far East--some far-away home in the Neilgherries, some lone bungalow
on the Sutlej--that helped them to paint their distant landscape with
more effect, and they sat, in imagination, under a spreading plantain
on the Himalaya, and watched the blood-red sunsets over the plains of
Hindostan. "Time passed very rapidly in this fashion. Love is the very
sublime of egotism, and people never weary of themselves. The last
evening--sad things these last evenings--came, and they strolled out
to take a last look on the lake and the snow-white Alps beyond it. The
painful feeling of having so short a time to say so much was over each
of them, and made them more silent than usual. As they thus loitered
along, they reached a spot where a large evergreen oak stood alone,
spreading its gigantic arms over the water, and from which the view of
the lake extended for miles in each direction.

"This is the spot to have a summer-house, Florry," said Loyd; "and when
I come back I'll build one here."

"You see there is a rustic bench here already. Harry made it."

Scarcely were the words uttered than she felt het cheek burning, and the
tingling rush of her blood to her temples.

"Harry means Mr. Calvert, I conclude?" said he, coldly.

"Yes," said she, faintly.

"It was a name I have never uttered since I passed this threshold,
Florry, and