uestion.

"They'll kill me, I know they will!" moaned Elsie.

Elizabeth did not pay the slightest attention to her complaints, and she
relapsed into silence. Finally, her eye was caught by the luncheon
temptingly laid out. There lay a mould of delicious apricot jelly in a
dish of cut crystal, shining like a great oval-shaped wedge of amber;
the cold chicken was arranged in the daintiest of slices, and there was
custard-cake, Elsie's special favorite.

She made an effort to fancy herself disgusted at the bare sight of food,
and turned away her head, but it was only to encounter the fragrant odor
from the little silver teapot, which Victoria had set upon the hearth.

"Could you eat anything, Elizabeth?" she said, dejectedly.

"No, no; I am not hungry."

"But you never touched a morsel of breakfast, and you ate nothing all
yesterday."

"I can't eat now--indeed I can't," was Elizabeth's reply.

"Oh, nor I!" moaned Elsie. "I feel as if a single mouthful would choke
me."

She glanced again at the tray, and began to moan and weep.

"Oh, dear me! This day never will be over! Oh, I wish I were dead, I do
truly! Do say something, Bessie; don't act so."

But Elizabeth only continued her incessant march up and down the floor,
and Elsie was forced to quiet herself.

She rose from the sofa at last, stood by the window a few moments, but
some magnetism drew her near the luncheon-tray again. She took up a
spoon and tasted the apricot jelly.

"I want things to look as if we had eaten something," she said, giving
Elizabeth a wistful glance from under her wet eyelashes.

"You had better try and eat," said her sister.

"One ought, I suppose," observed Elsie. "I think I will drink a cup of
tea--won't you have some?"

Elizabeth shook her head, and with renewed sighs Elsie poured herself
out a cup of tea and sat down at the table.

"Oh, this wretched day! I'd rather be dead and buried! Oh, oh!"

In an absurd, stealthy way, she thrust her spoon into the apricot jelly
again, and stifled her moans for a second with the translucent compound.

"I wish I could eat; but I can't!"

She put a fragment of chicken on her plate, made a strong effort and
actually succeeded in eating it, while Elizabeth was walking through the
other rooms.

"I've tried," she said, when her sister appeared in the doorway again,
"but I can't, it chokes me."

She drank her tea greedily.

"I am so thirsty; I believe I've got a fever."

But Elizab