had
been touched on.

"Why, Joseph dearest, you have told me nothing about yourself. Whether
you are to be in Calcutta, or up the country? Where, and how I am to
write? When I am to hear from you? What of papa--I was going to say,
our papa--would he like to hear from me, and may I write to him? Dare I
speak to him as a daughter? Will he think me forward or indelicate for
it? May I tell him of all our plans? Surely you ought to have told me
some of these things! What could we have been saying to each other all
this while?"

Joseph looked at her, and she turned away her head pettishly, and
murmured something about his being too absurd. Perhaps he was; I
certainly hold no brief to defend him in the case: convict or acquit
him, dear reader, as you please.

And yet, notwithstanding this appeal, the next three days passed
over just as forgetfully as their predecessors, and then came the sad
Wednesday evening, and the sadder Thursday morning, when, wearied out
and exhausted, for they had sat up all night--his last night--to say
good-bye.

"I declare he will be late again; this is the third time he has come
back from the boat," exclaimed Miss Grainger, as Florence sank, half
fainting, into Emily's arms.

"Yes, yes, dear Joseph," muttered Emily, "go now, go at once, before she
recovers again."

"If I do not, I never can," cried he, as the tears coursed down his
face, while he hurried away.

The monotonous beat of the oars suddenly startled the half-conscious
girl; she looked up, and lifted her hand to wave an adieu, and then sank
back into her sister's arms, and fainted.

Three days after, a few hurried lines from Loyd told Florence that he
had sailed for Malta--this time irrevocably off. They were as sad lines
to read as to have written. He had begun by an attempt at jocularity; a
sketch of his fellow-travellers coming on board; their national traits,
and the strange babble of tongues about them; but, as the bell rang, he
dropped this, and scrawled out, as best he could, his last and blotted
good-byes. They were shaky, ill-written words, and might, who knows,
have been blurred with a tear or two. One thing is certain, she who
read, shed many over them, and kissed them, with her last waking breath,
as she fell asleep.

About the same day that this letter reached Florence, came another,
and very different epistle, to the hands of Algernon Drayton, from
his friend Calvert It was not above a dozen lines, and dated from