him.'

Thus pressed, Mrs. Goodman acquiesced, and brought back intelligence to
Miss Power, who had watched them through the window, that his son did
not positively improve, but that his American friends were very kind to
him.

Having made use of her aunt, Paula seemed particularly anxious to get
rid of her again, and when that lady sat down to write letters, Paula
went to her own room, hastily dressed herself without assistance, asked
privately the way to the cottage, and went off thitherward unobserved.

At the upper end of the lane she saw a little house answering to the
description, whose front garden, window-sills, palings, and doorstep
were literally ablaze with nasturtiums in bloom.

She entered this inhabited nosegay, quietly asked for the invalid, and
if he were well enough to see Miss Power. The woman of the house soon
returned, and she was conducted up a crooked staircase to Somerset's
modest apartments. It appeared that some rooms in this dwelling had
been furnished by the landlady of the inn, who hired them of the tenant
during the summer season to use as an annexe to the hotel.

Admitted to the outer room she beheld her architect looking as
unarchitectural as possible; lying on a small couch which was drawn up
to the open casement, whence he had a back view of the window flowers,
and enjoyed a green transparency through the undersides of the same
nasturtium leaves that presented their faces to the passers without.

When the latch had again clicked into the catch of the closed door Paula
went up to the invalid, upon whose pale and interesting face a flush had
arisen simultaneously with the announcement of her name. He would have
sprung up to receive her, but she pressed him down, and throwing
all reserve on one side for the first time in their intercourse, she
crouched beside the sofa, whispering with roguish solicitude, her face
not too far from his own: 'How foolish you are, George, to get ill just
now when I have been wanting so much to see you again!--I am so sorry to
see you like this--what I said to you when we met on the shore was not
what I had come to say!'

Somerset took her by the hand. 'Then what did you come to say, Paula?'
he asked.

'I wanted to tell you that the mere wanton wandering of a capricious
mind was not the cause of my estrangement from you. There has been a
great deception practised--the exact nature of it I cannot tell you
plainly just at present; it is too painful--but it