tanding over her. "Forgive me, darling! forgive me for being almost glad
when I heard that you were free, and not married out of my reach. I can't
think of anything except that I've found you. It is you, isn't it? It is
you. I don't care what's happened to you, if it is only you."

As he spoke in this vehement, fiery way, she had been regarding him with
an expression of faint curiosity. "I believe you do really mean it," she
said, wonderingly, lingering over the words; "you always were a queer
fellow."

"Mean it!" he exclaimed, kneeling before her, his voice all tremulous
with the hope which the slightly yielding intonation of her words had
given him. "Yes--yes--I mean it."

The faint ghost of a smile, which only brought out the sadness of her
face, as a taper in a crypt reveals its gloom, hovered about her eyes.

"Poor boy!" she said; "I've, treated you very badly. I was going to make
an end of myself this afternoon, but I will wait till you are tired of
your fancy for me. It will make but little difference. There! there!
Please don't kiss me."

CHAPTER VIII.

He did not insist on their marriage taking place at once, although in her
mood of dull indifference she would not have objected to anything he
might have proposed. It was his hope that after a while she might become
calmer, and more cheerful. He hoped to take in his at the altar a hand a
little less like that of a dead person.

Introducing her as his betrothed wife, he found her very pleasant
lodgings with an excellent family, where he was acquainted, provided her
with books and a piano, took her constantly out to places of amusement,
and, in every way which his ingenuity could suggest, endeavoured to
distract and divert her. To all this she offered neither objection nor
suggestion, nor did she, beyond the usual conventional responses, show
the slightest gratitude. It was as if she took it for granted that he
understood, as she did, that all this was being done for himself, and not
for her, she being quite past having anything done for her. Her only
recognition of the reverential and considerate tenderness which he showed
her was an occasional air of wonder that cut him to the quick. Shame,
sorrow, and despair had incrusted her heart with a hard shell,
impenetrable to genial emotions. Nor would all his love help him to get
over the impression that she was no longer an acquaintance and familiar
friend, but somehow a stranger.

So far as he could f