the beginning of the end;" and Maverick sighed, as he thought of
the impotence of human skill past a certain point. "Miss Barry consulted
me a year ago, and was not in ignorance; but I hoped, nay, felt assured,
with care and quiet her life might be prolonged. She may linger some
months, and it may all be ended in a week. Good heavens! what a shock
for Miss Sylvie!"

He took two or three turns across the floor.

"Go," he said abruptly, with an imperious wave of the hand. Then, a
little scornfully, "You will both be better in bed. Lawrence looks as if
I might have him for a patient to-morrow; but, Jack, are you made out of
adamant?"

The thrust hurt him, but Maverick was not in a pitying mood. Indeed,
just at this moment his temper was savage. He had witnessed the pain
and the suffering of the woman he had begun to love, until it had been
hard to refrain from taking her in his strong arms, and sheltering her
from the keenest pangs.

The household remained the next morning as he had ordered. He was rather
sulky all the way up in the train with Jack; but a talk with brisk,
pungent Miss Morgan quite restored him.

"Open the houses, and build fires immediately," he commanded. "Burn up
and blow out the confined air, that there shall be no pestilential foes
to greet them on their own hearths."

He went down again that evening. If he had been annoyed before, he was
puzzled now. There had been no word spoken between Fred and Sylvie; but
the now, to her, sweet knowledge had come in a gesture, a glance, that
could no more be described than the fine pulse of love can be dissected.
She seemed to have waited breathless for just this strength and support.
A hasty lover might have placed himself in the foreground. It was as if
he said, "Here is my love, take it, use it, rely upon it; you cannot
wear it out, you cannot wound or hurt it by any thing that may look like
coldness; it is a blessed atmosphere to surround you until you stretch
out your hand, and draw me into your very soul. I have been trained in
patience and humility; only let me prove myself worthy in your eyes."

Three days after, they all came up to Yerbury. The evening before, Irene
Lawrence had gone to Sylvie's room, and found her kneeling by the open
window, her face turned heavenward in a wordless prayer for strength.
She knelt beside her, she took the passive hands in hers, she even
touched her own cold lips to the colder forehead of the other.

"Sylvie,"--the