pstairs and undress her; and if she suffers much pain,
don't fail to send for the doctor."

A white image of hopeless misery, Regina lay listening till the sound
of departing steps became inaudible, and when Hannah left the room
the girl groaned aloud in the excess of her grief:

"I did not even say good-bye. I did not once thank him for all he did
for me in the storm! And now I know, I feel I shall never see him
again! Oh, Douglass!"

The glass door leading into the flower-garden stood open, and Mr.
Lindsay who had been watching her from the cover of the clustering
honeysuckle, stepped back into the room.

With a cry of delight, she held out her arms.

"Dear Mr. Lindsay, I shall thank you, and pray for you, and love you
as long as I live!"

He put a small packet in her hand, and whispered:

"Here is something I wish you to keep until you are eighteen. Do not
open it before that time, unless I give you permission, or unless you
know that I am dead."

He drew her tenderly to his heart, and his lips pressed her cheek.
Then he said brokenly:

"O God! be merciful in all things, to my darling!"

A moment after she heard his rapid footsteps on the gravelled walk,
followed by the clang of the gate; then a great loneliness as of
death fell upon her.

There are indeed sorrows "that bruise the heart like hammers," and
age it suddenly, prematurely. In subsequent years Regina looked back
to the incidents of this eventful Sabbath, and marked it with a black
stone in the calendar of memory as the day on which she "put away
childish things," and began to see life and the world through new,
strange disenchanting lenses, that dispelled all the gilding glamour
of childhood, and unexpectedly let in a grey dull light that chilled
and awed her.

With tearless but indescribably mournful eyes, she looked vacantly at
the door through which her friend had vanished, as it then seemed,
for ever, and, finding that her own remarks were entirely unheard,
unheeded, Hannah touched her shoulder.

"Poor thing! Are you ready to let me carry you upstairs?"

"Thank you, but I am not going upstairs to-night. I want to stay
here, because I am too heavy to be carried up and down, and I can get
about better from here. Bring a pillow and some bedclothes. I can
sleep on this lounge."

"I shall be scolded if you don't go to bed."

"Let me alone, Hannah. I intend to stay where I am. Bring the things
I need. Nobody shall scold you if you will