self shook his head when they
called him convalescent.

Their hopes were never higher than one evening about a week after their
arrival, when they were all seated, as usual, in the open-air, under a
lime-tree on the lawn. The sun was beginning to set, and the rain of
golden sunlight fell over them through the green ambrosial foliage of
the tree, whose pale blossoms were still murmurous with bees. Eric was
leaning back in an easy chair, with Wildney sitting on the grass beside
his feet, while Montagu, resting on one of the mossy roots, read to them
the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, and the ladies were busy with their work.

"There--stop now," said Eric, "and let's sit out and talk until we see
some of `the fiery a'es and o'es of light' which he talks of."

"I'd no idea Shakespeare was such immensely jolly reading," remarked
Wildney naively. "I shall take to reading him through when I get home."

"Do you remember, Eric," said Montagu, "how Rose used to chaff us in old
days for our ignorance of literature, and how indignant we used to be
when he asked if we'd ever heard of an obscure person called William
Shakespeare?"

"Yes, very well," answered Eric, laughing heartily. And in this strain
they continued to chat merrily, while the ladies enjoyed listening to
their schoolboy mirth.

"What a perfectly delicious evening. It's almost enough to make me wish
to live," said Eric.

He did not often speak thus; and it made them sad. But Eric half sang,
half murmured to himself, a hymn with which his mother's sweet voice had
made him familiar in their cottage-home at Ellan--

"There is a calm for those who weep,
A rest for weary pilgrims found;
They softly lie, and sweetly sleep,
Low in the ground.

"The storm that wrecks the winter sky,
No more disturbs their deep repose,
Than summer evening's latest sigh
That shuts the rose."

The last two lines lingered pleasantly in his fancy, and he murmured to
himself again in low tones--

"Than summer evening's latest sigh
That shuts the rose."

"Oh, hush, hush, Eric!" said Wildney, laying his hand upon his friend's
lips; "don't let's spoil to-night by forebodings."

It seemed, indeed, a shame to do so, for it was almost an awful thing to
be breathing the splendour of the transparent air, as the sun broadened
and fell, and a faint violet glow floated over soft meadow and silver
stream. One might have fancied that the last rays of sunshine loved to
l