o go up to our house in the Grange Road and come back
again. What if Julia should have fainted, or be dead!

That was one of the longest half-hours in my life. I stood at the
street-door watching and waiting, and nodding to people who passed by,
and who simpered at me in the most inane fashion.

"The fools!" I called them to myself. At length Johanna turned the
corner, and her pony-carriage came rattling cheerfully over the large
round stones. I ran to meet her.

"For Heaven's sake, go to Julia!" I cried. "I have told her."

"And what does she say?" asked Johanna.

"Not a word, not a syllable," I replied, "except to bid me go away. She
has locked herself into the drawing-room."

"Then you had better go away altogether," she said, "and leave me to
deal with her. Don't come in, and then I can say you are not here."

A friend of mine lived in the opposite house, and, though I knew he was
not at home, I knocked at his door and asked permission to sit for a
while in his parlor.

The windows looked into the street, and there I sat watching the doors
of our new house, for Johanna and Julia to come out. No man likes to be
ordered out of sight, as if he were a vagabond or a criminal, and I felt
myself aggrieved and miserable.

At length the door opposite opened, and Julia appeared, her face
completely hidden behind a veil. Johanna helped her into the low
carriage, as if she had been an invalid, and paid her those minute
trivial attentions which one woman showers upon another when she is in
great grief. Then they drove off, and were soon out of my sight.

By this time our dinner-hour was near, and I knew my mother would be
looking out for us both. I was thankful to find at the table a visitor,
who had dropped in unexpectedly: one of my father's patients--a widow,
with a high color, a loud voice, and boisterous spirits, who kept up a
rattle of conversation with Dr. Dobree. My mother glanced anxiously at
me very often, but she could say little.

"Where is Julia?" she had inquired, as we sat down to dinner without
her.

"Julia?" I said, quite absently; "oh! she is gone to the Vale, with
Johanna Carey."

"Will she come back to-night?" asked my mother.

"Not to-night," I said, aloud; but to myself I added, "nor for many
nights to come; never, most probably, while I am under this roof. We
have been building our house upon the sand, and the floods have come,
and the winds have blown, and the house has fallen; but my mot