still care for me, I know that there is
something in me that will enable me to repay you for what you have
given me, by making your whole life happy. Dear, I do not know if I
speak as other women do, but, believe me, it is out of the fulness of
my heart. Take care, Arthur, oh! take care, lest your fate should be
that of the magician you spoke of the other day, who evoked the
spirit, and then fell down before it in terror. You have also called
up a spirit, and I pray that it was not done in sport, lest it should
trouble you hereafter."

"Angela, do not speak so to me; it is I who should have knelt to you.
Yes, you were right when you called yourself 'a queen of happy
things.' You are a queen----"

"Hush! Don't overrate me; your disillusion will be the more painful.
Come, Arthur, let us go home."

He rose and went with her, in a dream of joy that for a moment
precluded speech. At the door she bade him good-night, and, oh!
happiness, gave him her lips to kiss. Then they parted, their hearts
too full for words. One thing he asked her, however.

"What was it that took you to your mother's grave to-night?"

She looked at him with a curiously mixed expression of shy love and
conviction on her face, and answered,

"Her spirit, who led me to your heart."

CHAPTER XXVII

George's recovery, when the doctors had given up all hope, was
sufficiently marvellous to suggest the idea that a certain power had
determined--on the hangman's principle, perhaps--to give him the
longest of ropes; but it could in reality be traced to a more
terrestrial influence--namely, Lady Bellamy's nursing. Had it not been
for this nursing, it is very certain that her patient would have
joined his forefathers in the Bratham churchyard. For whole days and
nights she watched and tended him, scarcely closing her own eyes, and
quite heedless of the danger of infection; till in the end she
conquered the fever, and snatched him from the jaws of the grave. How
often has not a woman's devotion been successful in such a struggle!

On the Monday following the events narrated in the last chapter,
George, now in an advanced stage of convalescence, though forbidden to
go abroad for another fortnight, was sitting downstairs enjoying the
warm sunshine, and the sensation of returning life and vigour that was
creeping into his veins, when Lady Bellamy came into the room,
bringing with her some medicine.

"Here is your tonic, Georg