use?"

"No, no," Nina said, in a low voice; "you will do with me what you like.
It is no matter--what it is to me. Do with me as you please." And then
again she turned her large, dark eyes upon him, as if to make sure he
was not deceiving her. "Did you say that--that he remembered me--that he
had asked for me?"

"Remember you! If you only could have heard the piteous way he has
talked of you--always and always--and of your going away. I have such a
lot I could tell you! He had those loving-cups filled one night--there
was some fancy in his head he could call you back--"

She was sobbing a little; but she bravely dried her tears, and said,

"Tell me what I am to do."

But that was precisely what he did not know himself--for a moment. He
considered.

"Come up-stairs," he said. "His family are there. I will tell him a
visitor has called to see him. He often thinks you are there, but that
you won't speak to him. Well, you will just say a few words, to convince
him, and as quietly as you can, and come out again. Perhaps he will take
it all as a matter of course; and that will be well; and I will tell him
you will come again, after he has had some sleep. Of course you must be
very calm too; there must be no excitement."

"No, no," Nina murmured, in the same low voice, and she followed him
up-stairs.

On entering the sitting-room she glanced apprehensively at those
strangers; but Francie, divining in an instant who she was and why
Maurice had brought her hither, immediately came to her and pressed her
hand, in silence.

Maurice went into the sick-room.

"Linn," said he, cheerfully, "I've brought you a visitor; but she can't
stay very long; she will come again some other time. You've always been
asking about Miss Ross, and why she didn't come to see you; well, here
she is!"

Lionel slowly opened his tired eyes and looked towards the door; but he
seemed to take no interest in the girl who was standing there, pale,
trembling, and quite forgetting all she had been enjoined to do. Lionel,
with those restless, fatigued eyes, regarded her for but a second--then
he turned away, shaking his head. He had seen that illusory phantom so
often!

"Linn," said his friend, reproachfully, "when Miss Ross comes to see
you, are you not going to say a word to her?"

It was Nina herself who interrupted him. She uttered a little cry of
appeal and pity--"Leo!" She went quickly forward, and threw herself on
her knees by the bedside,