and Matilda is a fidget--I can't have two of you at my bedside.
Good-night." Stella stooped over her and kissed her. She whispered:
"Three weeks notice, remember, for the party!"

By the next evening the malady had assumed so formidable an aspect that
the doctor had his doubts of the patient's chance of recovery. With her
husband's full approval, Stella remained night and day at her mother's
bedside.

Thus, in a little more than a month from the day of his marriage,
Romayne was, for the time, a lonely man again.

The illness of Mrs. Eyrecourt was unexpectedly prolonged. There were
intervals during which her vigorous constitution rallied and resisted
the progress of the disease. On these occasions, Stella was able to
return to her husband for a few hours--subject always to a message which
recalled her to her mother when the chances of life or death appeared
to be equally balanced. Romayne's one resource was in his books and
his pen. For the first time since his union with Stella he opened the
portfolios in which Penrose had collected the first introductory
chapters of his historical work. Almost at every page the familiar
handwriting of his secretary and friend met his view. It was a new trial
to his resolution to be working alone; never had he felt the absence
of Penrose as he felt it now. He missed the familiar face, the quiet
pleasant voice, and, more than both, the ever-welcome sympathy with his
work. Stella had done all that a wife could do to fill the vacant place;
and her husband's fondness had accepted the effort as adding another
charm to the lovely creature who had opened a new life to him. But
where is the woman who can intimately associate herself with the hard
brain-work of a man devoted to an absorbing intellectual pursuit? She
can love him, admire him, serve him, believe in him beyond all other
men--but (in spite of exceptions which only prove the rule) she is out
of her place when she enters the study while the pen is in his hand.
More than once, when he was at work, Romayne closed the page bitterly;
the sad thought came to him, "Oh, if I only had Penrose here!" Even
other friends were not available as a resource in the solitary evening
hours. Lord Loring was absorbed in social and political engagements. And
Major Hynd--true to the principle of getting away as often as possible
from his disagreeable wife and his ugly children--had once more left
London.

One day, while Mrs. Eyrecourt still lay betwee