ike death that one
could not detect it from any motion. Her eyes were half open, her face
had a dull purplish tint. The abundant hair had been confined in a thick
plait, and brushed straight across her forehead. How distinct and finely
clear the brows were pencilled, how haughtily sweet the curve of the
pallid, fever-burned lips, how exquisitely round and perfect the chin,
the slope of the throat and neck! Jack stole one glance,--they had both
gone in with the doctor,--but it seemed almost sacrilegious, now when
she was powerless to frown the intruder out of her presence. And he had
carried her in his arms!

"O Darcy," Maverick exclaimed presently, "I did not go to Miss Barry's,
after all. I have been so desperately busy to-day."

Fred glanced up, and his eye met that of his friend. Both flushed, and
both mistook the cause.

It was a curiously auspicious moment. Jack went over to him. "I wonder,"
he began, with a marked persuasiveness in his tone, "if you would like
to have Sylvie Barry come over? She and your sister used to be such
friends. And, in times like these, animosities and foolish prejudices
ought to die out."

Fred gave him a startled look, and half turned, his lids drooping to
veil the secret in his eyes. Jack waited with breath that half strangled
him. He had marvelled how these two souls were to be brought into
friendly contact again; how Sylvie was to have an opportunity of knowing
that Fred was redeeming the manliness of manhood, instead of grounding
among its trivial shoals, and, if she ever had cared for him, to
understand that he was not utterly unworthy. He had spoken--what if the
chance should fail!

Fred very naturally misinterpreted the emotion. Jack offered this out of
the boundless tenderness of his heart, so confident was he of Sylvie's
regard.

"You think--she would come?"

His own voice, under the great stress, sounded miles away to him, quite
as if some other person had spoken.

How often the tense strain of feeling is relieved by a tone or an
incident quite out of the magnetic current!

"Some one ought to drop in occasionally, for your mother's sake," said
Dr. Maverick. "We shall have her in a fever from sympathy," putting the
fact more delicately in words than it was in his thought.

"She would be glad to come, I know. She would feel hurt if-- You empower
me to ask her?" with an abrupt transition of tone.

Fred Lawrence bowed his head. He could not trust his voice.

The sic