my cabin all
the afternoon. It seems that Mrs. Brandreth asked Jim if she might visit
me for a little while, and he consented.

I was half dozing when she came, with a green silk curtain drawn across
the window. I suggested that she should push this curtain back, so that
we might have light to see each other.

"Please, no!" she said. "I don't want light. I don't want to be seen.
Dear Lady Courtenaye--may I really call you 'Elizabeth,' as you asked me
to do?--I need so much to talk to you. And the darker it is, the
better."

"Very well--Rosemary!" I answered. "I've guessed that you are
worried--or not quite happy. There's nothing I should like so much as to
help you if I could. I believe you know that."

"Yes, I know--I feel it," she said. "I want your advice. I think you're
the only person whose advice I would take whether I liked it or not. I
don't understand why that is so. But it is. You're probably younger than
I am----"

"I'm getting on for twenty-three," I informed the girl, when I had made
her sit down beside my bed.

"And I'm nearly twenty-six!"

"You look twenty-one."

"I'm afraid I look lots of things that I'm not," she sighed, in a voice
too gloomy for the half-joking words. "Oh, now that I'm trying to speak,
I don't know how to begin, or how far to go! I must confess one thing
frankly: and that is, I can't tell you _everything_."

"Tell me what you want to tell: not a word more."

"Thank you. I thought you'd say that. Well, suppose you loved a man who
was very ill--so ill he couldn't possibly get well, and he begged you to
marry him--because then you might be in the same house till the end, and
he could die happily with you near: what would you do?"

"If I loved him _enough_, I would marry him the very first minute I
could," was my prompt answer.

"I do love him enough!" she exclaimed.

"But you hesitate?"

"Yes, because----Oh, Elizabeth, there's a terrible obstacle."

"An obstacle!" I echoed, forgetting my headache. "I can't understand
that, if--forgive me--if you're free."

"I am free," the girl said. "Free in the way you mean. There's no _man_
in the way. The obstacle is--a woman."

"Pooh!" I cried, my heart lightened. "I wouldn't let a woman stand
between me and the man I loved, especially if he needed me as much
as--as----"

"You needn't mind saying it. Of course you know as well as I do that
we're talking about Ralston Murray. And I believe he does need me. I
could make him ha