st thing. Make up your mind, Lucia, to give
yourself, trust yourself, to me, and I will promise to get you quite
well, sooner than any doctor can. I suppose you have seen one?"

"Yes."

"Well, what does he do for you?"

"Oh, I take hydrochloric acid, sulphuric acid, and strychnine through
the day, and digitalis and potassium bromide at night."

"Good heavens! Lucia! how can you be so foolish?" I exclaimed. "It's
most unwise to take all these things."

"You are not a doctor," she answered languidly.

"No; and therefore I can talk common sense," I said, flushing. "Come,
dearest, let us settle which is to be the happiest day in my life."

"Don't fuss, Victor. I can't settle any time just now."

"But at least give me an idea!"

"I can't give you what I have not got myself."

"Do you mean you have no idea when we shall be married?"

"Yes. I have just said so."

My hand closed involuntarily on the back of the chair till the
basket-work creaked. She heard it, and felt perhaps, also, the sudden
tension in the arm beneath her head. She raised her eyes with a gleam
of the old desire in them: they were soft, and her voice was gentle,
with out any mockery in it now, as she said,--

"I am excessively sorry about it, Victor, but you may trust me. I will
give you some certain date the moment I can, when I am better. You
can't think I would voluntarily defer it, do you?"

The whole lovely, inert form heaved a little as she spoke; the eyelids
and nostrils in the up-turned face quivered, the lips parted, and,
convinced, I bent over her with a hurried, desperate murmur.

"No! no! But, then, when? How long? Is it days, weeks, or the end of
the season?"

"Yes; I should think about the end. I can not fix it nearer. It is bad
taste to press me any farther."

She lifted her head from my arm and sat up right, though even then,
after a minute, her figure drooped languidly towards the side of the
chair, and she doubled one of her white, round arms on the wicker-work
to form a support. I stood silent, irritated, disappointed, perplexed,
biting my lips in nervous, absent-mindedness. She spoke twice to me
without my hearing what her words were, and I had to apologise.

"I was only saying I should like you to see the "Death of Hyacinthus"
now it is finished: see the result of last year's efforts and the cause
of this year's ill-health!"

"Certainly; I want to see it very much. When may I?"

"To-morrow, if you like, but I want