ited the untrained,
desultory intellect, unused to method or application. Nor did the
company of the good, plodding, sentimental maedchens give any pleasure
to the vehement creature, whose playfellow from babyhood had been a
man--and such a man! Use did no good, but rather, as the childish
activity and power of play and the sense of novelty passed, the growth
of the womanly soul made the heart-hunger and solitude worse, and
spirit and health came yearly to a lower level.

She was too languid to be more than indifferent when she saw us, and
the first sign of warmth that she gave was her kiss, when I went back
to visit her after putting her to bed at the hotel. She looked up, put
her arms round my neck, and said, "This is like the old days."

We brought her by slow stages to London, where Hippolyta came up to see
her for one day, and was terribly shocked. The doctors were not
hopeful, but said she might go where she pleased, and do what she
liked, and as her one wish was to be with us, my dear husband laughed
to scorn the notion that, whatever had been dear to Harold, should not
be his sacred charge, and so we took her back.

And there, she did not die. She lay on the sofa day after day, watched
the children at play, and listened dreamily to the family affairs,
rested and was petted by us both, called it very comfortable, and was
patient, but that whole winter seemed to remain where she was, neither
better nor worse. With the spring came a visit from George Yolland, a
prosperous man, as he well deserved to be, and the foremost layman in
all good works in the neighbourhood since dear old Lord Erymanth had
been disabled. In the forenoons, when I was teaching the children, and
Dermot was busy, he was generally in the drawing-room, talking to Dora,
whose blue eyes had a vivid silent intelligence, like no one but
Harold's. From the first day he had confirmed my conviction that, at
any rate, she was not dying now, and she began to start into strength.
She sat up all the evening, she walked round the garden, she drove out,
she came down to breakfast. The day after that achievement, she came
to me sobbing for joy with something inaudible about "his sake," while
George was assuring Dermot that there was only one woman in the world
for him!

So, on a bright summer day, we gave her to the friend Harold had gained
on the same day as Dermot, and she went to be the happy mistress of
Mount Eaton, and reign there, an abrupt