interrupted; "you and Julia have nothing to do with it.
When is your wedding to be?"

"If you have no objection," he answered--"have you the least shadow of
an objection?"

"Not a shadow of a shadow," I said.

"Well, then," he resumed, bashfully, "what do you think of August? It is
a pleasant month, and would give us time for that trip to Switzerland,
you know. Not any sooner, because of your poor mother; and later, if you
like that better."

"Not a day later," I said; "my father has been married again these four
months."

Yet I felt a little sore for my mother's memory. How quickly it was
fading away from every heart but mine! If I could but go to her now, and
pour out all my troubled thoughts into her listening, indulgent ear! Not
even Olivia herself, who could never be to me more than she was at this
moment, could fill her place.

CHAPTER THE FORTY-FIFTH.

FULFILLING THE PLEDGE.

We--that is, Dr. Senior, Lowry, and I--made our examination of Foster,
and held our consultation, three days from that time.

There was no doubt whatever that he was suffering from the same disease
as that which had been the death of my mother--a disease almost
invariably fatal, sooner or later. A few cases of cure, under most
favorable circumstances, had been reported during the last half-century;
but the chances were dead against Foster's recovery. In all probability,
a long and painful illness, terminating in inevitable death, lay before
him. In the opinion of my two senior physicians, all that I could do
would be to alleviate the worst pangs of it.

His case haunted me day and night. In that deep under-current of
consciousness which lurks beneath our surface sensations and
impressions, there was always present the image of Foster, with his
pale, cynical face, and pitiless eyes. With this, was the perpetual
remembrance that a subtile malady, beyond the reach of our skill, was
slowly eating away his life. The man I abhorred; but the sufferer,
mysteriously linked with the memories which clung about my mother,
aroused her most urgent, instinctive compassion. Only once before had I
watched the conflict between disease and its remedy with so intense an
interest.

It was a day or two after our consultation that I came accidentally upon
the little note-book which I had kept in Guernsey--a private note-book,
accessible only to myself. It was night; Jack, as usual, was gone out,
and I was alone. I turned over the leaves mere