lth. She thought that she was, perhaps, getting better, though, as
the doctor had told her, the reassuring symptoms might too probably
only be too fallacious. She could eat nothing,--literally nothing. A
few grapes out of the hothouse had supported her for the last week.
This statement was foolish on Lizzie's part, as Mr. Emilius was a man
of an inquiring nature, and there was not a grape in the garden. Her
only delight was in reading and in her child's society. Sometimes she
thought that she would pass away with the boy in her arms and her
favourite volume of Shelley in her hand. Mr. Emilius expressed a hope
that she would not pass away yet, for ever so many years. "Oh, my
friend," said Lizzie, "what is life, that one should desire it?" Mr.
Emilius of course reminded her that, though her life might be nothing
to herself, it was very much indeed to those who loved her. "Yes;--to
my boy," said Lizzie. Mr. Emilius informed her, with confidence, that
it was not only her boy that loved her. There were others;--or, at
any rate, one other. She might be sure of one faithful heart, if she
cared for that. Lizzie only smiled, and threw from her taper fingers
a little paper pellet into the middle of the room,--probably with
the view of showing at what value she priced the heart of which Mr.
Emilius was speaking.

The trial had occupied two days, Monday and Tuesday, and this was now
the Wednesday. The result had been telegraphed to Mr. Emilius,--of
course without any record of the serjeant's bitter speech,--and the
suitor now gave the news to his lady-love. Those two horrid men had
at last been found guilty, and punished with all the severity of the
law. "Poor fellows," said Lady Eustace,--"poor Mr. Benjamin! Those
ill-starred jewels have been almost as unkind to him as to me."

"He'll never come back alive, of course," said Mr. Emilius. "It'll
kill him."

"And it will kill me too," said Lizzie. "I have a something here
which tells me that I shall never recover. Nobody will ever believe
what I have suffered about those paltry diamonds. But he coveted
them. I never coveted them, Mr. Emilius; though I clung to them
because they were my darling husband's last gift to me." Mr. Emilius
assured her that he quite understood the facts, and appreciated all
her feelings.

And now, as he thought, had come the time for pressing his suit. With
widows, he had been told, the wooing should be brisk. He had already
once asked her to be his wif