wait till you
are warmed."

He mended the fire and placed a chair for her, and handed her
to it. Elizabeth did as she was bade, like a child; and sat
there before the fire a little while, unable to keep quiet
tears from coming and coming again.

"I don't know what you must think of me, Mr. Winthrop," she
said at last, when she was about ready to go. "I could not
help myself. -- I have never seen death before."

"You must see it again, Miss Elizabeth; -- you must meet it
face to face."

She looked up at him as he said it, with eager eyes, from
which tears ran yet, and that were very expressive in the
intensity of their gaze. His were not less intent, but as
gentle and calm as hers were troubled.

"Are you ready?" he added.

She shook her head, still looking at him, and her lips formed
that voiceless 'no.' She never forgot the face with which he
turned away, -- the face of grave gentleness, of sweet gravity,
-- all the volume of reproof, of counsel, of truth, that was in
that look. But it was truth that, as it was known to him, he
seemed to assume to be known to her; he did not open his lips.

Elizabeth rose; she must go; she would have given a world to
have him say something more. But he stood and saw her put on
her gloves and arrange her cloak for going out, and he said
nothing. Elizabeth longed to ask him the question, "What must
I do?" -- she longed and almost lingered to ask it; -- but
something, she did not know what, stopped her and choked her,
and she did not ask it. He saw her down to the street, in
silence on both sides, and they parted there, with a single
grasp of the hand. _That_ said something again; and Elizabeth
cried all the way home, and was well nigh sick by the time she
got there.

CHAPTER VI.

How now?
Even so quickly may one catch the plague?
TWELFTH NIGHT.

Miss Haye came down to breakfast the next morning; but after
little more than a nominal presentation of herself there, she
escaped from Rose's looks and words of comment and innuendo
and regained her own room. And there she sat down in the
window to muse, having carefully locked out Clam. She had
reason. Clam would certainly have decided that her mistress
'wanted fixing,' if she could have watched the glowing intent
eyes with which Elizabeth was going deep into some subject --
it might be herself, or some other. Herself it was.

"Well," -- she thought, very unconscious how clearly one of the
houses on the opposite side