turned abruptly round, and, seating himself at the table, wrote a
note, which he pushed across to her. It acknowledged the receipt of
Captain von Ehrhardt's letter, and expressed Miss Mayhew's feeling that
there was nothing in it to change her wish that the acquaintance should
cease. In after years, the terms of this note did not always appear to
Elmore wisely chosen or humanely considered; but he stood at bay, and he
struck mercilessly. In spite of the explicit concurrence of both Miss
Mayhew and his wife, he felt as if they were throwing wholly upon him a
responsibility whose fearfulness he did not then realize. Even in his
wife's "Send it!" he was aware of a subtile reservation on her part.

VIII.

Mrs. Elmore and Lily again rose buoyantly from the conclusive event, but
he succumbed to it. For the delicate and fastidious invalid, keeping his
health evenly from day to day upon the condition of a free and peaceful
mind, the strain had been too much. He had a bad night, and the next day
a gastric trouble declared itself which kept him in bed half the week,
and left him very weak and tremulous. His friends did not forget him
during this time. Hoskins came regularly to see him, and supplied his
place at the table d'hote of the Danieli, going to and fro with the
ladies, and efficiently protecting them from the depredations of the
Austrian soldiery. From Mr. Rose-Black he could not protect them; and
both the ladies amused Elmore with a dramatization of how the Englishman
had boldly outwitted them, and trampled all their finessing under foot,
by simply walking up to them in the reading-room, and saying, "This is
Miss Mayhew, I suppose," and putting himself at once on the footing of
an old family friend. They read to Elmore, and they put his papers in
order, so that he did not know where to find anything when he got well;
but they always came home from the hotel with some lively gossip, and
this he liked. They professed to recognize an anxiety on the part of Mr.
Andersen's aunt that his mind should not be diverted from the civil
service in India by thoughts of young American ladies; but she sent some
delicacies to Elmore, and one day she even came to call with her nephew,
in extreme reluctance and anxiety as they pretended to him.

The next afternoon the young man called alone, and Elmore, who was now
on foot, received him in the parlor, before the ladies came in. Mr.
Andersen had a bunch of flowers in one hand, and a smal