fe, her hand always in
the hand of this woman who had tried to steal her lover from her, her
soft, hopeless eyes, so tragically unconscious, bent upon the bold
intriguer.

What possessed the child? Warkworth's letters, Julie's company--those
seemed to be all she desired.

And at last, in the June beauty and brilliance, when a triumphant summer
had banished the pitiful spring, when the meadows were all perfume and
color, and the clear mountains, in a clear sky, upheld the ever-new and
never-ending pomp of dawn and noon and night, the little, wasted
creature looked up into Julie's face, and, without tears, gasped out
her story.

"These are his letters. Some day I'll--I'll read you some of them; and
this--is his picture. I know you saw him at Lady Henry's. He mentioned
your name. Will you please tell me everything--all the times you saw
him, and what he talked of? You see I am much stronger. I can bear
it all now."

* * * * *

Meanwhile, for Delafield, this fortnight of waiting--waiting for the
African letters, waiting for the revival of life in Aileen--was a period
of extraordinary tension, when all the powers of nerve and brain seemed
to be tested and tried to the utmost. He himself was absorbed in
watching Julie and in dealing with her.

In the first place, as he saw, she could give no free course to grief.
The tragic yearning, the agonized tenderness and pity which consumed
her, must be crushed out of sight as far as possible. They would have
been an offence to Lady Blanche, a bewilderment to Aileen. And it was on
her relation to her new-found cousin that, as Delafield perceived, her
moral life for the moment turned. This frail girl was on the brink of
perishing because death had taken Warkworth from her. And Julie knew
well that Warkworth had neither loved her nor deserved her--that he had
gone to Africa and to death with another image in his heart.

There was a perpetual and irreparable cruelty in the situation. And from
the remorse of it Julie could not escape. Day by day she was more
profoundly touched by the clinging, tender creature, more sharply
scourged by the knowledge that the affection developing between them
could never be without its barrier and its mystery, that something must
always remain undisclosed, lest Aileen cast her off in horror.

It was a new moral suffering, in one whose life had been based hitherto
on intellect, or passion. In a sense it held at bay eve