flask, and a pair of socks and some collars. What was that? A
sheet of paper that must have fallen out of Browning. It had fluttered
to the floor, whence she picked it up, and it was poetry; perhaps the
much-talked-of poem on the Grinstun man. No, it was another, and this
was how it ran, as she read it, and hot and cold shivers ran alternately
down her neck:--

The while my lonely watch I keep,
Dear heart that wak'st though senses sleep
To thee my heart turns gratefully.
All it can give to thee is given.
From all besides, its heartstrings riven.
Could ne'er be reft more fatefully.

For thou art all in all to me,
My life, my love, my Marjorie,
Dow'ring each day increasingly
With wealth of thy dear self. I swear
I'll love thee false, I'll love thee fair.
World without end, unceasingly.

"O, Eugene, Eugene," she sobbed to herself, "why would you go away, when
everybody wanted you, and I most of all?" Then she put the things back
into the knapsack, all but the sheet of paper, which she carried away,
and thrust into the bosom of her dress, as she saw Miss Du Plessis
approaching. In common with the other ladies of the house, they retired
to their rooms and to bed, leaving the gentlemen to tell stories and
smoke, and otherwise prepare themselves for an unsatisfactory breakfast
and a general disinclination for work in the morning. In the back of
the house, geographical studies continued to flourish, the corporal and
Maguffin contending with the ladies for educational honours, now being
lifted up to the seventh heaven of success, and, now, depressed beneath
the load of many adverse books. All the time, a little bird was singing
in Miss Carmichael's sleeping ear, or rather in that which really does
the hearing, certain words like, "My life, my love, my Marjorie," and
then again "I'll love thee false, I'll love thee fair, world without
end, unceasingly." When she awoke in the morning, the girls told her she
had been crying in her sleep, and saying "O Eugene!" which she
indignantly denied, and forbade them to repeat.

CHAPTER XIX.

The Glory Departed--The Mail--Coristine's Letters to Miss
Carmichael, Mrs. Carruthers and the Dominie--Sylvanus to
Tryphena--Burying Muggins--A Dull Week--A Letter From Coristine and
Four to Him--Marjorie's Letter and Book--Telegram--Mr. Douglas and
Miss Graves--Reception Parties--The Colonel and