ed!"

"Would he?"

"And how submissive you would be, if you were his wife! It's a
thousand pities that you are not in love with each other,--that is,
if you are not."

"Lily, I thought that there was a promise between us about that."

"Ah! but that was in other days. Things are all altered since that
promise was given,--all the world has been altered." And as she said
this the tone of her voice was changed, and it had become almost sad.
"I feel as though I ought to be allowed to speak about anything I
please."

"You shall, if it pleases you, my pet."

"You see how it is, Bell; I can never again have anything of my own
to talk about."

"Oh, my darling, do not say that."

"But it is so, Bell; and why not say it? Do you think I never
say it to myself in the hours when I am all alone, thinking over
it--thinking, thinking, thinking. You must not,--you must not grudge
to let me talk of it sometimes."

"I will not grudge you anything;--only I cannot believe that it must
be so always."

"Ask yourself, Bell, how it would be with you. But I sometimes fancy
that you measure me differently from yourself."

"Indeed I do, for I know how much better you are."

"I am not so much better as to be ever able to forget all that. I
know I never shall do so. I have made up my mind about it clearly and
with an absolute certainty."

"Lily, Lily, Lily! pray do not say so."

"But I do say it. And yet I have not been very mopish and melancholy;
have I, Bell? I do think I deserve some little credit, and yet, I
declare, you won't allow me the least privilege in the world."

"What privilege would you wish me to give you?"

"To talk about Dr Crofts."

"Lily, you are a wicked, wicked tyrant." And Bell leaned over her,
and fell upon her, and kissed her, hiding her own face in the gloom
of the evening. After that it came to be an accepted understanding
between them that Bell was not altogether indifferent to Dr Crofts.

"You heard what he said, my darling," Mrs Dale said the next day, as
the three were in the room together after Dr Crofts was gone. Mrs
Dale was standing on one side of the bed, and Bell on the other,
while Lily was scolding them both. "You can get up for an hour or two
to-morrow, but he thinks you had better not go out of the room."

"What would be the good of that, mamma? I am so tired of looking
always at the same paper. It is such a tiresome paper. It makes one
count the pattern over and over again. I wonder h