--"Dear Louis, you are not strong
enough to talk any more to-day. I will wear the ring a little while to
please you, but remember, this other thing you want can never be."

He looked up at her, his face pallid with exhaustion, "Promise me," he
said faintly, "that the ring shall stay on your finger until I take it
off."

And Evadne promised.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Three years had slipped away and Evadne still wore her cousin's ring. A
great tenderness was growing up in her heart toward him. She yearned
over him as only those can understand who know what it is to carry the
burden of souls upon their hearts by night and day but no thought of
love ever crossed her mind. To Evadne Hildreth, love was a wonderfully
sacred thing. The ring fretted her and she longed to be freed from its
presence, but Louis held her to her promise. If he only waited long
enough, he persuaded himself, his patience would be rewarded. Some day
this shy, sweet bird would nestle against his heart. In the meantime he
would keep the ungenerous advantage which his illness had given him. He
forgot that it needs more to tame a bird than merely putting it in a
cage!

Isabelle had been intensely curious but her questions had elicited no
satisfaction from her brother, and Evadne had answered simply, "Louis
took a fancy to put it on my finger: I am wearing it to please him,
that is all:" and even Isabelle found her cousin's sweet dignity an
effectual bar against her morbid inquisitiveness.

They had seen comparatively little of each other. Evadne was constantly
busy, either at private or hospital nursing, and very short were the
furloughs which she spent under her uncle's roof. Louis had spent the
first winter after his illness with his mother in the South of France,
now he was in Florida, but he wrote regularly, and Evadne answered--when
she could. Sweet, pleading letters which he read over and over and
honestly tried to be better: but it was only for her sake; he knew no
higher motive--yet.

It was a perfect day. Down by the river an alligator was sunning
himself, and the resinous breath of the pine trees swept its aromatic
fragrance over Louis as he lay at full length in a hammock with his
hands behind his head. He had thrown the magazine he had been reading on
the ground and it lay open at the article on Heredity which he had just
finished. His desultory thoughts were roaming idly over the subject,
when one, more far reaching than the rest, made hi