wo we should be ready to be off. What should I do? I was
frantic with the thought that he might be worse, he might go away. I
was to be absent such a length of time. I must--I would see him before
we went. What better moment than the present, when everybody was engaged
in this fretting, foolish picnic. I would run up-stairs--call to him
outside his door--make him speak to me.

With a guilty look around, I started up, stole through the group on the
piazza, and ran to the stairs. But alas, Richard had not failed to mark
my movements, and before my foot had touched the stair his voice
recalled me. I started with a guilty look, and trembled, but dared not
meet his eye.

"Pauline, are you going away? We are just ready start."

If I had had any presence of mind I should have made an excuse, and gone
to my own room for a moment, and taken my chance of getting to the floor
above; but I suppose he would have forestalled me. I could not command a
single word, but turned back and followed him. As we got into the
carriage, the voices and the laughing really seemed to madden me.
Driving away from the house, I never shall forget the sensation of
growing heaviness at my heart; it seemed to be turning into lead. I
glanced back at the closed windows of his room and wondered if he saw
us, and if he thought that I was happy.

The length of that day! The glare of that sun! The chill of that
unnatural wind! Every moment seemed to me an hour. I can remember with
such distinctness the whole day, each thing as it happened;
conversations which seemed so senseless, preparations which seemed so
endless. The taste of the things I tried to eat: the smell of the grass
on which we sat, and the pine-trees above our heads: the sound of fire
blazing under the teakettle, and the pained sensation of my eyes when
the smoke blew across into our faces: the hateful vibration of Mary
Leighton's laugh: all these things are unnaturally vivid to me at
this day.

I don't know what the condition of my brain must have been, to have
received such an exaggerated impression of unimportant things.

"What can I do for you, Miss Pauline?" said Kilian, throwing himself
down on the grass at my feet. I could not sit down for very impatience,
but was walking restlessly about, and was now standing for a moment by a
great tree under which the table had been spread. It was four o'clock,
and there was only vague talk of going home; the horses had not yet been
brought up, t