intrusive--away from Harry Dart, with his teasing jokes, his wholesale
contempt for any weakness or romantic feeling. I had never declared to
myself that I was in love with Georgina, nor had I formed my wishes
to my own heart in distinct thoughts. Still, young although I was, I
should hardly dare to write down here how far above every other idea
and object on earth Georgina appeared to me. I never thought of her
then, I never looked upon her, without the blood thickening around my
heart as if I stood face to face with Fate: my every impulse toward
the future was blended with my desire to be something to her. I had
not dared to dream then that she could be anything to me.

Before I was out of bed that morning, Frederick, Mr. Raymond's valet,
came to me with the request that I should go to his master's room
before I went down stairs. It was in the wing, and the third chamber
of a handsome suite comprising study, dressing-room and bedroom.
It was hung and curtained with red; a wood-fire was burning on the
hearth; the chairs were covered with red; even the silken coverlet of
the bed was red, and the only place where living, brilliant color was
not seemed to be the pale shrunken face on the pillow, a little paler
and more delicate than usual: the hands, too, clutching each other on
the red blanket, had a look of languor and waste.

"Good-morning, Floyd," Mr. Raymond said, and then dismissed Frederick.

"But you ought not to talk, sir," expostulated the valet, "until you
have had your breakfast."

The sick man made a gesture for him to leave the room, watched him go
out, and then fastened his piercing black eyes on me and looked at me
long and fixedly. "You saw me yesterday?" said he at last, breaking
the silence.

I nodded, finding it a difficult task to speak.

"Are you a babbling child?" said he with considerable force and
earnestness, "or have you enough of a man's knowledge to have learned
to respect the infirmities of other men?"

"I tell no one's secrets, sir: they are not mine to tell."

He quite broke down, and lay there before me strangling with sobs and
cries. "Should Mr. Floyd know," he murmured, "should Mr. Floyd even
guess, that I am the wretched wreck of a man that I am, he would not
let Helen stay with me another moment. He would extenuate, he would
pity, nothing: he does not know what it is for a man like me, once
proud, witty, gay, to bear seclusion and depression and decay. I long
at times for some