erfect reliance on
my future husband, I pushed back the music-stool, and walked straight
across the room to the window.

His head was indeed leaned on his arms; but he was white and insensible.

"Come here!" I said, sternly and commandingly, to Herbert, who stood
where I had left him. "Now, if you can, hold him, while I wheel this
sofa;--and now, ring the bell, if you please."

We placed him on the couch, and Polly came running in.

"Now, good-night, Sir; we can take care of him. With very many thanks
for your politeness," I added, coldly; "and I will send home the book
to-morrow."

He muttered something about keeping it as long as I wished, and I turned
my back on him.

"Oh! oh!--what had _he_ thought all this time?--what had he suffered?
How his heart must have been agonized!--how terribly he must have felt
the mortification,--the distress! Oh!"

We recovered him at length from the dead faint into which he had fallen.
Polly, who thought but of the body, insisted on bringing him "a good
heavy-glass of Port-wine sangaree, with toasted crackers in it"; and
wouldn't let him speak till he had drunken and eaten. Then she went out
of the room, and left me alone with my justly incensed lover.

I took a _brioche_, and sat down humbly at the head of the sofa. He held
out his hand, which I took and pressed in mine,--silently, to be
sure; but then no words could tell how I had felt, and now felt,--how
humiliated! how grieved! How wrongly I must have seemed to feel and to
act! how wrongly I must have acted,--though my conscience excused me
from feeling wrongly,--so to have deluded Herbert!

At last I murmured something regretful and tearful about Lieutenant
Herbert--Herbert! how I had admired that name!--and now, this Ithuriel
touch, how it had changed it and him forever to me! What was in a
name?--sure enough! As I gazed on the pale face on the couch, I should
not have cared, if it had been named Alligator,--so elevated was I
beyond all I had thought or called trouble of that sort! so real was the
trouble that could affect the feelings, the sensitiveness, of the noble
being before me!

At length he spoke, very calmly and quietly, setting down the empty
tumbler. I trembled, for I knew it must come.

"I was so glad that fool came in, Del! For, to tell the truth, I felt
really too weak to talk. I haven't slept for two nights, and have been
on my feet and talking for four hours,--then I have had no dinner"--

"Oh!"