over the pages, and seemed to be trying whether he could bear
to read different passages; but he gave up one after another, and nearly
half-an-hour had passed before he began.

'February 20. It was the winter after her coming to Martindale.'

'This morning was a pattern one for February, and I went out before the
brightness was passed, and had several turns in the walled garden. I am
afraid you will never be able to understand the pleasantness of such a
morning. Perhaps you will say the very description makes you shiver,
but I must tell you how beautiful it was. The frost last night was not
sharp, but just sufficient to detain the dew till the sun could turn it
into diamonds. There were some so brilliant, glancing green or red in
different lights, they were quite a study. It is pleasant to think that
this pretty frost is not adorning the plants with unwholesome beauty,
though the poor little green buds of currant and gooseberry don't like
it, and the pairs of woodbine leaves turn in their edges. It is doing
them good against their will, keeping them from spreading too soon. I
fancied it like early troubles, keeping baptismal dew fresh and bright;
and those jewels of living light went on to connect themselves with the
radiant coronets of some whom the world might call blighted in--'

It had brought on one of his severe fits of coughing. Violet was going
to ring for Brown, but he stopped her by a sign, which he tried to make
reassuring. It was worse, and lasted longer than the former one, and
exhausted him so much, that he had to rest on the sofa cushions before
he could recover breath. At last, in a very low voice, he said,

'There, it is of no use to try.'

'I hope you are better; pray don't speak; only will you have anything?'

'No, thank you; lying still will set me to rights. It is only that these
coughs leave a pain--nothing to mind.'

He settled himself on the sofa, not without threatenings of a return
of cough, and Violet arranged the cushions, concerned at his trying to
thank her. After a silence, he began to breathe more easily, and said,

'Will you read me the rest of that?'

She gave him the book to find the place, and then read--

'The world might call them blighted in their early bloom, and deprived
of all that life was bestowed for; but how different is the inner
view, and how glorious the thought of the numbers of quiet, commonplace
sufferers in homely life, like my currant and gooseberry bushes,