r
and scent delicious to one who had been long ill. John lay looking at
them and at her, as if, oblivious of past and future, his whole life
were absorbed into that one exquisite hour.

For me--where I sat I do not clearly know, nor probably did any one
else.

"There," said Miss March to herself, in a tone of almost childish
satisfaction, as she arranged the last hyacinth to her liking.

"They are very beautiful," I heard John's voice answer, with a strange
trembling in it. "It is growing too dark to judge of colours; but the
scent is delicious, even here."

"I could move the table closer to you."

"Thank you--let me do it--will you sit down?"

She did so, after a very slight hesitation, by John's side. Neither
spoke--but sat quietly there, with the sunset light on their two heads,
softly touching them both, and then as softly melting away.

"There is a new moon to-night," Miss March remarked, appositely and
gravely.

"Is there? Then I have been ill a whole month. For I remember
noticing it through the trees the night when--"

He did not say what night, and she did not ask. To such a very
unimportant conversation as they were apparently holding my involuntary
listening could do no harm.

"You will be able to walk out soon, I hope," said Miss March again.
"Norton Bury is a pretty town."

John asked, suddenly--"Are you going to leave it?"

"Not yet--I do not know for certain--perhaps not at all. I mean," she
added, hurriedly, "that being independent, and having entirely
separated from, and been given up by, my cousins, I prefer residing
with Mrs. Jessop altogether."

"Of course--most natural." The words were formally spoken, and John
did not speak again for some time.

"I hope,"--said Ursula, breaking the pause, and then stopping, as if
her own voice frightened her.

"What do you hope?"

"That long before this moon has grown old you will be quite strong
again."

"Thank you! I hope so too. I have need for strength, God knows!" He
sighed heavily.

"And you will have what you need, so as to do your work in the world.
You must not be afraid."

"I am not afraid. I shall bear my burthen like other men. Every one
has some inevitable burthen to bear."

"So I believe."

And now the room darkened so fast that I could not see them; but their
voices seemed a great way off, as the children's voices playing at the
old well-head used to sound to me when I lay under the brow of the
Flat--in the