for
keeping up the wonted habits and appearances.

"Ask Mr. Landholm to come down, Clam."

"I did ask him," said the handmaiden, "and he don't want
nothin' but biscuits, and he's got lots o' them."

"Won't he have a cup of tea?"

"He knows his own mind mostly," said Clam; "and he says he
won't."

"What arrangements can you make for his sleeping up there to-
night, Clam?"

"Him and me 'll see to it," responded Clam confidently. "I
know pretty much what's in the house; and the best of it ain't
too good for him."

So Elizabeth drank her cup of tea alone; and sat alone through
the long evening and mused. For still it was rather musing
than thinking; going over things past and things present;
things future she cared not much to meddle with. It was not a
good time, she said, for taking up her religious wants and
duties; and in part that was true, severely as she felt them;
for her mind was in such a slow fever that none of its pulses
were healthful. Fear, and foreboding, for her father and for
herself, -- hope springing along with the fear; a strong sense
that her character was different from what it ought to be, and
a strong wish that it were not, -- and a yet mightier leaning
in another direction; -- all of these, meeting and modifying
each other and struggling together, seemed to run in her veins
and to tell in each beat of the tiny timekeeper at her wrist.
How could she disentangle one from the other, or give a quiet
mind to anything, when she had it not to give?

She was just bitterly asking herself this question, when
Winthrop came in at the open parlour door; and the immediate
bitter thought which arose next was, did he ever have any _but_
a quiet mind to give to anything? The two bitters were so
strong upon her tongue that they kept it still; till he had
walked up to the neighbourhood of her sofa.

"How is my father, Mr. Landholm?" she said rising and meeting
him.

"As you mean the question I cannot answer it -- There is
nothing declarative, Miss Elizabeth. Yes," he said kindly,
meeting and answering her face, -- "you must wait yet awhile
longer."

Elizabeth sat down again, and looked down.

"Are you troubled with fears for yourself?" he said gently,
taking a chair near her.

"No --" Elizabeth said, and said truly. She could have told
him, what indeed she could not, that since his coming into the
house another feeling had overmastered that fear, and kept it
under.

"At least," she added, -- "