not say anything; but she looked at her lover with eyes in
which two big tears were standing. She could scarcely see him through
those oceans of moisture, bitter and salt, yet softened by the sense of
trust in him, and rest upon him. When he stooped and kissed her on the
forehead before them all, the girl did not blush. It was a solemn
betrothal, sealed by pain, not by kisses.

"Yes, go," she said to him in words which were half sobs, and which he
understood, but no one else.

"You perceive," he said, "it is not a stranger interfering in your
affairs, May, but Ursula doing her natural work for her father through
me--her representative. God bless her! I am Ursula now," he said with a
broken laugh of joy; then grew suddenly grave again. "You trust me,
May?"

Poor Reginald's heart swelled; this little scene so calmly transacted
under his eyes, would it ever happen for him, or anything like it? No,
his reason told him--and yet; still he was thinking but little of his
father. He had his duty too, and this happened to be his duty; but no
warmer impulse was in the poor young fellow's heart.

And thus the day went on. It was afternoon already, and soon the sky
began to darken. When his children went into the room, Mr. May took no
notice of them--not that he did not know them; but because his whole
faculties were fixed upon that woman who was his nurse, and who had all
her wits about her, and meant to keep him there, and to carry out the
doctor's instructions should heaven and earth melt away around her. She
too perceived well enough how he was watching her, and being familiar
with all the ways, as she thought, of the "mentally afflicted,"
concluded in her mind that her new patient was further gone than the
doctor thought.

"I hope as you'll stay within call, sir," she said significantly to
Reginald; "when they're like that, as soon as they breaks out they're as
strong as giants; but I hope he won't break out, not to-day."

Reginald withdrew, shivering, from the idea thus presented to him. He
stole down to his father's study, notwithstanding the warning she had
given him, and there with a sick heart set to work to endeavour to
understand his father--nay, more than that, to try to find him out. The
young man felt a thrill of nervous trembling come over him when he sat
down in his father's chair and timidly opened some of the drawers. Mr.
May was in many respects as young a man as his son, and Reginald and he
had never bee