at the languid attentions which she had prized were fading
away and would never ripen to anything more. Her sorrow for her father's
death was deeper than Lottie's, and while it was fresh she hardly
thought of Horace Thorne's coldness, except as a part of the general
dreariness of life, and did not attempt to seek out its cause. Even Mrs.
Blake never for a moment expected the revelation which was made to her
near the beginning of October.

It was Lottie who told her, coming to her one night with a white face of
agony and resolution.

Horace was dangerously ill. He had been ill before, but this was
something altogether different. The cold which led to such alarming
results had been caught in one of his secret expeditions to see Lottie.
She had been forced to keep him waiting, and a chilly September rain had
drenched him to the skin. He had gone away in his wet clothes, had tried
to pretend that there was nothing amiss with him, and had gone out the
next day in order to be able to attribute his cold to a ride in the
north-east wind. Since that time Lottie had had three letters--the first
a gallant little attempt at gayety and hopefulness; the second, after a
considerable interval, depressed and anxious. They had ordered him
abroad. "I am sure they think badly of me," he wrote, "though I'll cheat
the grave yet--if I can. But how am I to live through the winter in some
horrible hole of a place without my darling? Suppose I get worse instead
of better, and die out there, and never see you again--never once?" And
so on for a page of forebodings. Lottie's fondness for him, fanned by
pity and remorse--was it not for her that he had risked his
life?--flamed up to passion. They say that a woman always puts the real
meaning of her letter into the postscript. I don't know how that may be,
but I do not think she would ever fail to give full weight to any
postscript she might receive. Horace's postscript was, "After all, I've
a great mind to stay in England and chance it."

Lottie was terrified. She replied, wildly entreating him to go, and
vowing that they should meet again and not be parted. She did not yet
know what she would do, but--Then followed a few notes of music roughly
dashed in.

He was puzzled. He tried the notes furtively on the piano, but they told
him nothing. That day, however, there came to his mother's house a girl
with whom he had had one of his numerous flirtations in bygone days. He
asked her to play to him,