even
walk a little, and well looked after by a local doctor of ability. As
Flaxman, tramping up behind his carriage climbed the long hill to El
Biar, he saw the whole marvellous place in a white light of beauty--the
bay, the city, the mountains, olive-yard and orange-grove, drawn in pale
tints on luminous air. Suddenly, at the entrance of a steep and narrow
lane, he noticed a slight figure parasol standing--a parasol against the
sun.

'We thought You would like to be shown the short cut up the hill,' said
Rose's voice--strangely demure and shy. 'The man can drive round.'

A grip of the hand, a word to the driver, and they were alone in the
high-walled lane which was really the old road up the hill before
the French brought zigzags and civilization. She gave him news of
Robert--better than he had expected. Under the influence of one of the
natural reactions that wait on illness, the girl's tone was cheerful,
and Flaxman's spirits rose. They talked of the splendor of the day,
the discomforts of the steamer, the picturesqueness of the landing--of
anything and everything but the hidden something which was responsible
for the dancing brightness in his eyes, the occasional swift veiling of
her own.

Then, at, an angle of the lane, where a little spring ran cool and brown
into a moss-grown trough, where the blue broke joyously through the gray
cloud of olive-wood, where not a sight or sound was to be heard of all
the busy life which hides and nestles along the hill, he stopped, his
hands seizing hers.

'How long?' he said, flushing, his light overcoat falling back from his
strong, well-made frame; 'from August to February--how long?'

No more! It was most natural, nay, inevitable. For the moment death
stood aside and love asserted itself. But this is no place to chronicle
what it said.

And he had hardly asked, and she had hardly yielded, before the same
misgiving, the same, shrinking, seized on the lovers themselves. They
sped up the hill, they crept into the house far apart. It was agreed
that neither of them should say word.

But, with that extraordinarily quick perception that sometimes goes with
such a state as his, Elsmere had guessed the position of things before
he and Flaxman had been half an hour together. He took a boyish pleasure
in making his friend confess himself, and, when Flaxman left him, at
once sent for Catherine and told her.

Catherine, coming out afterward, met Flaxman in the little tiled hal