ed to sap her youth and vigor. Her face was drawn and haggard,
and her pleasant gray eyes had lost their smile. Somehow Mr. Denner's
danger, which to some extent she realized, did not impress her so deeply;
perhaps because that was, in a manner, the result of his own will, and
perhaps, too, because no one quite knew how much the little gentleman
suffered and how near death he was.

Lois had heard Gifford's voice as she went into the sick-room, and his
words of blame rung again in her ears. They emphasized Mrs. Forsythe's
despair about her son's future. She spoke to Lois as though she knew
there was no possible chance of her recovery.

"You see, my dear," she said, in her soft, complaining voice, which
sometimes dropped to a whisper, "he has no aunts or uncles to look after
him when I am gone; no one to be good to him and help him to be good. Not
that he is wild or foolish, Lois, like some young men, but he's full of
spirit, and he needs a good home. Oh, what will he do without me. He has
no one to take care of him!"

Lois was too crushed by misery to feel even a gleam of humor, when the
thought flashed through her mind that she might offer to take his
mother's place; but she knew enough not to express it.

"Oh," Mrs. Forsythe continued, "if he were only married to some sweet
girl that I knew and loved how happy I should be, how content!"

"I--I wish he were," Lois said.

"My death will be so hard for him, and who will comfort him! I am sorry
I distress you by speaking so, but, my dear child, on your death-bed you
look facts in the face. I cannot help knowing his sorrow, and it makes me
so wretched. My boy,--my poor boy! If I could only feel easy about him!
If I thought, oh, if I could just think, you cared for him! I know I
ought not to speak of it, but--it is all I want to make me happy. I might
have had a little more of life, a few months, perhaps, if it had not been
for the accident. There, there, you mustn't be distressed; but if I could
know you cared for him, it would be worth dying for, Lois."

"I do care for him!" Lois sobbed. "We all do!"

Mrs. Forsythe shook her head. "You are the only one I want; if you told
me you would love him, I should be happy, so happy! Perhaps you don't
like to say it. But listen: I know all about last fall, and how you sent
the poor fellow away broken-hearted; but I couldn't stop loving you, for
all that, and I was so glad when he told me he was going to try again;
and that is