Lyle's voice carolling pathetically down the road, the ditty,

"Io ti voglio ben assai,
Ma tu non pensi a me!"

"Tis my song, mine! I taught him!" said Christal, laughing to herself.
"He thought to stay behind and escape me and my cruelty.' But we shall
see--we shall see!"

Though in her air was a triumphant, girlish coquetry, yet something
there was of a woman's passion, too. But she heard a descending step,
and had only just, time to regain her invalid attitude and her doleful
countenance, when Olive entered.

"This accident is most unfortunate," said Miss Rothesay, "How will you
manage your journey to-morrow?"

"I shall not be able to go," said Christal in a piteous voice, though
over her averted face broke a comical smile.

"Are you really so much hurt, my dear?"

"Do you doubt it?" was the sharp reply. "I am sorry to trouble you; but
I really am unable to leave the Dell."

Very often did she try Olive's patience thus; but the faithful daughter
always remembered those last words, "Take care of Christal."

So, excusing all, she tended the young sufferer carefully until
midnight, and then went down-stairs secretly to perform a little act
of self-denial, by giving up an engagement she had made for the morrow.
While writing to renounce it, she felt, with a renewed sense of vague
apprehension, how keen a pleasure it was she thus resigned--a whole long
day in the forest with her pet Ailie, Ailie's grandmamma, and--Harold
Gwynne.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

Midnight was long past, and yet Olive sat at her desk; she had finished
her note to Mrs. Gwynne, and was poring over a small packet of letters
carefully separated from the remainder of her correspondence. If she had
been asked the reason of this, perhaps she would have made answer that
they were unlike the rest--solemn in character, and secret withal. She
never looked at them but her expression changed; when she touched them
she did it softly and tremulously, as one would touch a living sacred
thing.

They were letters which at intervals during his various absences she had
received from Harold Gwynne.

Often had she read them over--so often, that, many a time waking in the
night, whole sentences came distinctly on her memory, vivid almost as a
spoken voice. And yet scarcely a day passed that she did not read them
over again. Perhaps this was from their tenor, for they were letters
such as a man rarely writes to a woman, or even a friend to a friend