er cross her mind, till, suddenly, the whole flashed upon her, by
the appearance of her maid Nina in the drawing-room.

"To your own room, Mademoiselle?" asked she, with a look that said far
more than any words.

"Yes, Nina," whispered she. "What can I do? She is so ill! They tell me
it may be dangerous at any moment, and--"

"Hush, my dear Miss Dalton!" said Martha; "one word may wake her."

"I'd be a butterfly!" warbled the sick lady, in a low weak treble; while
a smile of angelic beatitude beamed on her features.

"Hush! be still!" said Martha, motioning the surrounders to silence.

"What shall I do, Nina? Shall I go and speak to my Lady?" asked Kate.

A significant shrug of the shoulders, more negative than affirmative,
was the only answer.

"I'd be a gossamer, and you'd be the King of Thebes," said Mrs.
Ricketts, addressing a tall footman, who stood ready to assist in
carrying her.

"Yes, madam," said he, respectfully.

"She's worse," whispered Martha, gravely.

"And we'll walk on the wall of China by moonlight, with Cleopatra and
Mr. Cobden?"

"Certainly, madam," said the man, who felt the question too direct for
evasion.

"Has she been working slippers for the planet Ju-Ju-Jupiter yet?" asked
Purvis, eagerly, as he entered the room, heated, and flushed from the
weight of a portentous bag of colored wool.

"No; not yet," whispered Martha. "You may lift her now, gently very
gently, and not a word."

And in strict obedience, the servants raised their fair burden, and
bore her from the room, after Nina, who led the way with an air that
betokened a more than common indifference to human suffering.

"When she gets at Ju-Jupiter," said Purvis to Kate, as they closed
the procession, "it's a bad symptom; or when she fancies she 's
Hec-Hec-Hec-Hec--"

"Hecate?"

"No; not Hec-Hecate, but Hecuba--Hecuba; then it's a month at least
before she comes round."

"How dreadful!" said Kate. And certainly there was not a grain of
hypocrisy in the fervor with which she uttered it.

"I don't think she 'll go beyond the San-Sandwich Islands this time,
however," added he, consolingly,

"Hush, Scroope!" cried Martha. And now they entered the small and
exquisitely furnished dressing-room which was appropriated to Kate's
use; within which, and opening upon a small orangery, stood her bedroom.

Nina, who scrupulously obeyed every order of her young mistress,
continued the while to exhibit a hundred petty signs of