recent illness. She merely bowed; and
bending over some plants that stood near, waited in silence for him to
proceed.

'I--I--ought to have left here, before,' said Harry.

'You should, indeed,' replied Rose. 'Forgive me for saying so, but I
wish you had.'

'I was brought here, by the most dreadful and agonising of all
apprehensions,' said the young man; 'the fear of losing the one dear
being on whom my every wish and hope are fixed. You had been dying;
trembling between earth and heaven. We know that when the young, the
beautiful, and good, are visited with sickness, their pure spirits
insensibly turn towards their bright home of lasting rest; we know,
Heaven help us! that the best and fairest of our kind, too often fade
in blooming.'

There were tears in the eyes of the gentle girl, as these words were
spoken; and when one fell upon the flower over which she bent, and
glistened brightly in its cup, making it more beautiful, it seemed as
though the outpouring of her fresh young heart, claimed kindred
naturally, with the loveliest things in nature.

'A creature,' continued the young man, passionately, 'a creature as
fair and innocent of guile as one of God's own angels, fluttered
between life and death. Oh! who could hope, when the distant world to
which she was akin, half opened to her view, that she would return to
the sorrow and calamity of this! Rose, Rose, to know that you were
passing away like some soft shadow, which a light from above, casts
upon the earth; to have no hope that you would be spared to those who
linger here; hardly to know a reason why you should be; to feel that
you belonged to that bright sphere whither so many of the fairest and
the best have winged their early flight; and yet to pray, amid all
these consolations, that you might be restored to those who loved
you--these were distractions almost too great to bear. They were mine,
by day and night; and with them, came such a rushing torrent of fears,
and apprehensions, and selfish regrets, lest you should die, and never
know how devotedly I loved you, as almost bore down sense and reason in
its course. You recovered. Day by day, and almost hour by hour, some
drop of health came back, and mingling with the spent and feeble stream
of life which circulated languidly within you, swelled it again to a
high and rushing tide. I have watched you change almost from death, to
life, with eyes that turned blind with their eagerness and deep
a