I stepped back softly and extinguished the lamp, after which I reseated myself and watched the face which I had so often pictured in my imagination; but not like this- O, not like this!

With the moonlight streaming across it, it seemed like the face of a disembodied spirit, so ethereal was it. The hair was thrown back from a brow whose nobility I appreciated for the first time. The hand which lay outside the coverlid was delicate now as a woman's. I longed to take it in mine and let my tears fall on it; but I dared not risk waking the sleeper. I felt that this was the supreme hour. Soon he would waken, or else, and I owned with a shudder that this was the more probable event, his life would ebb away with only a parting sigh to mark its passing.

At length near dawn I was conscious of a change. The sleeper stirred slightly, the breath came quicker, then slowly, slowly the eyes opened and looked at me, not through the glaze of a few hours since, but with full, if feeble, recognition. "Veronica!"

I was on my knees beside him in an instant. "Yes," I whispered, "it is Veronica, come to nurse you, to make you well."

"No," came in a low voice. "It cannot be. You are not

"I am your wife," I murmured, and with this

I clasped his hand and rained tears and kisses upon it.

Doubtless I should have been chidden for this by the doctor who had bade me be calm, and warned me that any sudden excitement might prove fatal to his patient; but I think there is a power higher than any rules and my action justified itself in the result, for Miles Farringdon smiled a pitifully weak smile and whispered: "I thought I was on earth; but it seems I am in Paradise."

Then he lay quite still, his hand clasping mine, and the moon shone in benignantly on this, our second betrothal.

CHAPTER XIX

WHICH BRINGS MY STORY TO AN END

In my inexperience, I had expected that when the fever had once broken, convalescence would be rapid, and I was discouraged to find that the days dragged by leaving Miles still weak and white as the pillow against which he lay. At length, however, I began to trace an improvement. The colour came slowly back to the pale cheeks and strength to the feeble limbs. He was able first to sit up in his bed-gown for an hour each day, then to be dressed and walk about his room, and finally with the doctor's aid to creep downstairs, where a chair was placed for him on a brick terrace which looked out on a tiny garden.

The fresh air gave him new life, and he seemed so well that for the first time I thought I might venture to converse with him on matters which affected him so closely. I feared lest he might learn of them rudely from one of the letters which lay in a pile unopened upon his bedside table. Having decided to communicate the news to him,

I thought long and hard on the manner of doing it.

We were sitting in solitude, his hand clasping mine, as if in fear of losing me. The bees hummed busily about us. Except that sound, all was still, for it was a Sunday morning and the carts were not rumbling as usual over the cobble-stones, nor the servants shouting and swearing in the courtyard.

At length I broke the silence, timidly beginning: 66 Miles!"

"What is it, Sweetheart?"

"Are you glad that I am your wife?"

Miles turned in his chair in order that he might contemplate my face. Then he smiled. "Am I glad that the sun shines, that the birds sing, that I am alive?"

“That is a very pretty speech and shall be set down to your credit; but how glad are you?

"I should not be near so happy as I am, if it were in my power to give it a definite measure." "Had anyone asked you three months back how much you would give to have me for your wife, what answer would you have made?"

"Faith, I should have found it an easy matter to answer that question with one word."

66 And that word would have been

? "

66

"I wonder if that is the truth," said I, professing to be unconvinced. Suppose that your choice lay between Bolton Court on the one hand and me on the other. Which would you choose?"

Sir Miles leaned his head against the high back of his chair, and his eyes seemed to be looking at something far away.

"Bolton Court," he answered slowly, "is dear to me. I love every inch of it. I love the gateway where the traitors used to swing in olden times. I love the courtyard and the hayricks, and the avenue of linden trees, and the duck pond and the sheepfold; but, dear heart, forty thousand Bolton Courts would not weigh in the scales against you. Surely you know that. Why do you ask such foolish questions?"

66

“Oh,” said I smiling, though rather trembling, "I have a mind to try you. Suppose it were your title that you were called upon to resign for my sake, would you do it?"

At this Sir Miles laughed as if I were a child. "Why, 't is no such mighty title when you come to that," he answered. "Brave men have borne it; but cowards and sneaks and brutes have borne it too, so it must be that its honour or dishonour is made by him that bears it. I would have flung it to the winds any time in this last year for the privilege of calling you mine. Yet for your sake