"

"I cannot wait," he replied, his tone changing to one of determination.
"It is useless to urge it."

He broke from her and left the room, and in another minute had left
the house, Pierre attending him. A feeling, amounting to a conviction,
rushed over the unhappy lady that she had seen him for the last time
until it was too late.

She was right. It was too late by weeks and months.

December came in. The Alps were covered with snow; Grenoble borrowed the
shade, and looked cold, and white, and sleety, and sloppy; the gutters,
running through the middle of certain of the streets, were unusually
black, and the people crept along especially dismal. Close to the
fire in the barn of a French bedroom, full of windows, and doors, and
draughts, with its wide hearth and its wide chimney, into which we could
put four or five of our English ones, shivered Lady Isabel Vane. She had
an invalid cap on, and a thick woolen invalid shawl, and she shook and
shivered perpetually; though she had drawn so close to the wood fire
that there was a danger of her petticoats igniting, and the attendant
had frequently to spring up and interpose between them and the crackling
logs. Little did it seem to matter to Lady Isabel; she sat in one
position, her countenance the picture of stony despair.

So had she sat, so looking, since she began to get better. She had had
a long illness, terminating in a low fever; but the attendants whispered
among themselves that miladi would soon get about if she would only
rouse herself. She had got so far about as to sit up in the windy
chamber; and it seemed to be to her a matter of perfect indifference
whether she ever got out of it.

This day she had partaken of her early dinner--such as it was, for her
appetite failed--and had dozed asleep in the arm chair, when a noise
arose from below, like a carriage driving into the courtyard through the
_porte cochere_. It instantly aroused her. Had _he_ come?

"Who is it?" she asked of the nurse.

"Miladi, it is monsieur; and Pierre is with him. I have begged milady
often and often not to fret, for monsieur would surely come; miladi,
see, I am right."

The girl departed, closing the door, and Lady Isabel sat looking at it,
schooling her patience. Another moment, and it was flung open.

Sir Francis Levison approached to greet her as he came in. She waved him
off, begging him, in a subdued, quiet tone, not to draw too near, as any
little excitement made her fai