ks had
turned almost yellow. The tempting heap was fast rising in an elegant
many-hued hemisphere; but her thoughts were not in her occupation, for
tears were coursing each other down her cheeks.

"Those tears are for her father," thought the leech as he watched her
from the threshold. "Poor child!"--How often he had heard his old friend
call her so!

And till now he had never thought of her but as a child; but to-day he
must look at her with different eyes--her own father had enjoined it. And
in fact he gazed at her as though he beheld a miracle.

What had come over little Pulcheria?--How was it that he had never
noticed it before?--It was a well-grown maiden that he saw, moving round,
snowwhite arms; and he could have sworn that she had only thin, childish
arms, for she had thrown them round his neck many a time when she had
ridden up and down the garden on his back, calling him her fine horse.

How long ago was that? Ten years! She was now seventeen!

And how slender, and delicate, and white her hands were--those hands for
which her mother had often scolded her when, after building castles of
sand, she had sat down to table unwashed.

Now she was laying the grapes round the pomegranates, and he remembered
how Horapollo, only yesterday, had praised her dainty skill.

The windows were well screened, but a few sunbeams forced their way into
the room and fell on her red-gold hair. Even the fair Boeotians, whom he
had admired in his student-days at Athens, had no such glorious crown of
hair. That she had a sweet and pretty face he had always known; but now,
as she raised her eyes and first observed him, meeting his gaze with
maidenly embarrassment and sweet surprise, and yet with perfect welcome,
he felt himself color and he had to pause a moment to collect himself
before he could respond with something more than an ordinary greeting to
hers. The dialogue that flashed through his mind in that instant began
with sentences full of meaning. But all he said was:

"Yes, here I am," which really did not deserve the hearty reply:

"Thank God for that!" nor the bewitching embarrassment of the explanation
that ensued: "on my mother's account."

Again he blushed; he, the man who had long since forgotten his youthful
shyness. He asked after Dame Joanna, and how she was bearing her trouble,
and then he said gravely: "I was the bearer of bad news yesterday, and
to-day again I have come like a bird of ill-omen."

"You?" she