ill to go
through the ceremony. Come!"

She met my gaze fully, and then laughed too. After a second she said,--

"If you disbelieve me and think I am making up, you can at any rate
tell from my looks that I am ill--any man can see that."

I looked at her critically now, remembering my feeling of shock when I
had first seen her on my return. Yes; I remembered I had thought her
looking fearfully overworked and exhausted, and now I looked at her
again with redoubled anxiety.

From the black lace of her dinner dress, cut as low as vanity dared to
dictate, and with but one narrow black strip supporting it on her
shoulders, her white throat and breast and light head rose like dawn
out of the night ocean. The milky arms that lay idly along the chair
were as smooth, as downy, but far less dimpled than when I had seen
them in Paris. Round the throat I could trace now the clavicles,
formerly invisible, and lower, at the edge of her bodice, the
depression in the centre of the soft breast was wider. Yes; she was
very much thinner, and the face above only confirmed the impression of
illness. It was pale, and looked slightly swollen; the eyes were
dilated and surrounded with blue shades; the lips were red, almost
unnaturally so, to the point of soreness, as they get to look in fever.

"Well, have you come to your conclusion?" she said, as she raised her
eyes suddenly and intercepted mine surveying her.

I coloured slightly, looked away, and then said merely, "Yes, you don't
look well."

She gave a little slighting laugh, as much as to say, "You might have
arrived at that before, one would think!"

"But Lucia," I said, entreatingly, "this is all very serious; do tell
me what is wrong."

"Ah, my health becomes a serious matter," she answered, leaning her
soft head back on my arm that was resting on the top of her chair, and
looking up at me with her brilliant, clever eyes ablaze with indulgent
derision, "if it is likely to stop our marriage when YOU desire it!"

I winced before the delicate thrust in her words, and hardly knew
whether the pain of them was drowned in the pleasure the confident
touch of her head transfused through my arm.

"That is unnecessarily unkind," I answered, quietly. "Your health or
ill-health would always be a serious matter, but since you hint
it--yes, I admit--if it prevented our marriage, if it came between us
now, Lucia, it would surpass even the importance it has at all other
times. Tell me w