ut till morning,"
concluded Eva, without a word as to what I was to do with her; neither,
indeed, had I myself given that question a moment's consideration.

"Then let's make a dash for it now!" was all I said or thought.

"No; they can't come yet, and Jose is strong and brutal, and I
have heard how ill you are. That you should have come to me
notwithstanding--" and she broke off with her little hands lying
so gratefully on my shoulders, that I know not how I refrained from
catching her then and there to my heart. Instead, I laughed and said
that my illness was a pure and deliberate sharp, and my presence there
its direct result. And such was the virtue in my beloved's voice, the
magic of her eyes, the healing of her touch, that I was scarce conscious
of deceit, but felt a whole man once more as we two stood together in
the moonlight.

In a trance I stood there gazing into her brave young eyes. In a
trance I suffered her to lead me by the hand through the rank, dense
rhododendrons. And still entranced I crouched by her side near the
further side, with only unkempt grass-plot and a weedy path between us
and that ponderous door, wide open still, and replaced by a section of
the lighted hail within. On this we fixed our attention with mingled
dread and impatience, those contending elements of suspense; but the
black was slow to reappear; and my eyes stole home to my sweet girl's
face, with its glory of moonlit curls, and the eager, resolute,
embittered look that put the world back two whole months, and Eva
Denison upon the Lady Jermyn's poop, in the ship's last hours. But it
was not her look alone; she had on her cloak, as the night before,
but with me (God bless her!) she found no need to clasp herself in its
folds; and underneath she wore the very dress in which she had sung at
our last concert, and been rescued in the gig. It looked as though she
had worn it ever since. The roses were crushed and soiled, the tulle all
torn, and tarnished some strings of beads that had been gold: a tatter
of Chantilly lace hung by a thread: it is another of the relics that I
have unearthed in the writing of this narrative.

"I thought men never noticed dresses?" my love said suddenly, a pleased
light in her eyes (I thought) in spite of all. "Do you really remember
it?"

"I remember every one of them," I said indignantly; and so I did.

"You will wonder why I wear it," said Eva, quickly. "It was the first
that came that terrible ni