ised me to live. Get
well; come down-stairs; then you will see me every day, you know--there
is a temptation. Good-by, Camille!--are you coming, Rose? What are you
loitering for? God bless you, and comfort you, and help you to forget
what it is madness to remember!"

With these wild words she literally fled; and in one moment the room
seemed to darken to Camille.

Outside the door Josephine caught hold of Rose. "Have I committed
myself?"

"Over and over again. Do not look so terrified; I mean to me, but not to
him. How blind he is! and how much better you must know him than I do to
venture on such a transparent deceit. He believes whatever you tell
him. He is all ears and no eyes. Yes, love, I watched him keenly all
the time. He really thinks it is pity and remorse, nothing more. My poor
sister, you have a hard life to lead, a hard game to play; but so far
you have succeeded; yet could look poor Raynal in the face if he came
home to-day."

"Then God be thanked!" cried Josephine. "I am as happy to-day as I can
ever hope to be. Now let us go through the farce of dressing--it is near
dinner-time--and then the farce of talking, and, hardest of all, the
farce of living."

From that hour Camille began to get better very slowly, yet perceptibly.

The doctor, afraid of being mistaken, said nothing for some days, but
at last he announced the good news at the dinner-table. "He is to come
down-stairs in three days," added the doctor.

But I am sorry to say that as Camille's body strengthened some of the
worst passions in our nature attacked him. Fierce gusts of hate and love
combined overpowered this man's high sentiments of honor and justice,
and made him clench his teeth, and vow never to leave Beaurepaire
without Josephine. She had been his four years before she ever saw this
interloper, and she should be his forever. Her love would soon revive
when they should meet every day, and she would end by eloping with him.

Then conscience pricked him, and reminded him how and why Raynal had
married her: for Rose had told him all. Should he undermine an absent
soldier, whose whole conduct in this had been so pure, so generous, so
unselfish?

But this was not all. As I have already hinted, he was under a great
personal obligation to his quondam comrade Raynal. Whenever this was
vividly present to his mind, a great terror fell on him, and he would
cry out in anguish, "Oh! that some angel would come to me and tear me by
force