light-footed as a sister of mercy, moved about in
her pale gray woollen gown, with a few snowdrops in her breast, her face
more thoughtful and sad, yet sweeter than I had ever seen it. She had a
work-basket beside her, and a book, while she sat by the head of my bed,
but I saw that she occupied herself only with her thoughts, sitting with
her hands laced loosely together in her lap, gazing across the room
through a distant window at the ragged scratchy outlines of the bare
brown wood that hid the chimneys of the farm from the view of the
inmates of the Hall.

It needed no witchcraft to divine her thoughts. She was thinking of John
at the farm, and possibly of all that had passed there between him and
me. It saddened her, but I thought she must be very secure in her faith,
for there was no angry disturbance in her anxious eyes, no bitterness of
jealousy about her soft sweet lips. I read her behaviour all through
like a printed legend; her faithful kindness, her tender care, her
thoughtful regret. She was feeling in her woman's heart the inevitable
wrong she was about to do me, measuring my love by the strength and
endurance of her own, and pitying me with a pity which was great in
proportion to the happiness which was to be her own lot for life.

Everywhere she moved I followed her with John's eyes, it seemed, seeing
new beauties in her, feeling how he must love her. In my weak desolation
I wished to die, that I might slip quietly out of the hold of my kind
enemy, leaving vacant for her the place from which she was going to
thrust me with her strong gentle hands. But under her care I recovered
quickly.

Never had there been such a nurse, such a petting, fondling, bewitching
guardian of an ill-humoured, nervous, thankless patient. How lovingly
she tucked me up on the couch by the fireside; how unweariedly she
sought to amuse me with her sprightly wit; how nimbly her feet went and
came; how deftly and readily her hands ministered; I could never tell
you half of it, my dears! If her face fell into anxious lines while my
eyes were closed, no sooner did I seem to wake to consciousness again
than the sunshine and the archness beamed out. Once or twice it smote me
that she wondered at my petulance and gloom--wondered, not knowing that
my time had already come, that the burden of the sorrow she had brought
me was already upon my shoulders. "Are you in pain, dear?" she would
ask, perplexed. "I am afraid you are worse than we th