in
the answer.

"You look pale--your face is drawn--you seem to be in pain!" was the
observation of the Colonel, before the invalid could answer, and taking
the hand of the latter without seeming to notice the shudder with which
his touch was met.

"Perhaps so--cousin--Egbert--yes--I do _not_ feel quite so well as I
have done," muttered the invalid, who seemed all the while to be making
a violent effort to command face and feeling. "There was music in the
street, you know--I heard it and I suppose that it agitated me."

"Sorry! tut! tut! tut! You ought to be getting better by this time, I
should think!" said the Colonel, laying his finger on the pulse of
Richard and looking up at vacancy as a Doctor has the habit of doing
when he performs that very imposing (imposing upon _whom_?) operation.
What was there in his glance, that met the eye of Joe Harris, as he did
so--and gave her so plain a confirmation of her worst suspicions? What
power is it that lets in the daylight on our darkest wishes and worst
motives, just at the moment when we flatter ourselves that we have them
more carefully hidden away in darkness than ever before? Joe was still
at the window, where she had been joined by Bell, the latter already
half-forgetful of her sick brother and eager to show some astounding
purchase she had just made at one of the dry-goods palaces.

"There--go away, girls; you bother poor Richard with your chatter!" said
Colonel Egbert, affecting great cordiality and a little familiarity.
(The fact was, as may have been noticed, that Bell had spoken only five
words aloud and Joe not a word, since the two had entered.) "Richard is
not so well, I am afraid. I will sit by him awhile and you may go away
and gabble to your heart's content."

"Just as you like," answered Isabella, doubling up a half-unrolled
little package and preparing to go. "I have some little things to look
after up-stairs. Will you go with me, Joe? Of course you are not going
away until after dinner?"

"Humph! I do not know that I am going away at all!" said the wild girl,
her words very different from her thought at the moment. "You are such
nice people, and Dick is such an interesting invalid, and who
knows--well, I will not speculate any more about that, _in public_, just
yet! Yes, Bell, go up-stairs and attend to your finery; I am going down
into the basement to ask Norah for two slices of bread-and-butter and
the wing of a cold chicken!"

And away throug