sh me to do for him.'

'I cannot think that he will be able or glad to go when it comes to the
point,' said Averil, with a shaken tone.

Dr. May was nearer than she thought, and spoke peremptorily. 'Take
care what you are about! You are not to worry him with discussions. If
he can go, he will; if not, he will stay at home; but pros and cons are
prohibited. Do you hear, Averil!'

'Yes; very well.'

'Papa you really are very cruel to that poor girl,' were Ethel's first
words outside.

'Am I? I wouldn't be for worlds, Ethel. But somehow she always puts
me in a rage. I wish I knew she was not worrying her brother at this
moment!'

No, Averil was on the staircase, struggling, choking with the first
tears she had shed. All this fortnight of unceasing vigilance and
exertion, her eyes had been dry, for want of time to realize, for want
of time to weep, and now she was ashamed that hurt feeling rather than
grief had opened the fountain. She could not believe that it was not a
cruel act of kindness, to carry one so weak as Leonard away from home
to the care of a stranger. She apprehended all manner of ill
consequences; and then nursing him, and regarding his progress as her
own work, had been the sedative to her grief, which would come on her
'like an armed man,' in the dreariness of his absence. Above all, she
felt herself ill requited by his manifest eagerness to leave her who
had nursed him so devotedly--her, his own sister--for the stiff, plain
Miss May whom he hardly knew. The blow from the favourite companion
brother, so passionately watched and tended, seemed to knock her down;
and Dr. May, with medical harshness, forbidding her the one last hope
of persuading him out of the wild fancy, filled up the measure.

Oh, those tears! How they would swell up at each throb of the wounded
heart, at each dismal foreboding of the desponding spirit. But she had
no time for them! Leonard must not be left alone, with no one to cover
him up with his wrappers.

The tears were strangled, the eyes indignantly dried. She ran out at
the garden door. The sofa was empty! Had Henry come home and helped
him in? She hurried on to the window; Leonard was alone in the
drawing-room, resting breathlessly on an ottoman within the window.

'Dear Leonard! Why didn't you wait for me!'

'I thought I'd try what I could do. You see I am much stronger than we
thought.' And he smiled cheerfully, as he helped himself by the
furni