lay.

Reading is no easy matter for him; but he races through those delicately
penned lines with quite a new strength. The spinster sees the color come
and go upon his wan cheek, and with what a trembling eagerness he folds
the letter at the end, and, making a painful effort, tries to thrust it
under his pillow. The good woman has to aid him in this. He thanks her,
but says nothing more. His fingers are toying nervously at a bit of torn
fringe upon the coverlet. It seems a relief to him to make the rent
wider and wider. A little glimpse of the world has come back to him,
which disturbs the repose with which but now he would have quitted it
forever.

Adele has been into the sick-chamber from time to time,--once led away
weeping by the good Doctor, when the son had fallen upon his wild talk
of school-days; once, too, since consciousness has come to him again,
but before her letter had been read. He had met her with scarce more
than a touch of those fevered fingers, and a hard, uncertain quiver of a
smile, which had both shocked and disappointed the poor girl. She
thought he would have spoken some friendly consoling word of her mother;
but his heart, more than his strength, failed him. Her mournful, pitying
eyes were a reproach to him; they had haunted him through the wakeful
hours of two succeeding nights, and now, under the light of that laggard
letter, they blaze with a new and an appealing tenderness. His fingers
still puzzle wearily with that tangle of the fringe. The noon passes.
The aunt advises a little broth. But no, his strength is feeding itself
on other aliment. The Doctor comes in with a curiously awkward attempt
at gentleness and noiselessness of tread, and, seeing his excited
condition, repeats to him some texts which he believes must be
consoling. Reuben utters no open dissent; but through and back of all he
sees the tender eyes of Adele, which, for the moment, outshine the
promises, or at the least illuminate them with a new meaning.

"I must see Adele," he says to the Doctor; and the message is
carried,--she herself presently bringing answer, with a rich glow upon
her cheek.

"Reuben has sent for me,"--she murmurs it to herself with pride and joy.

She is in full black now; but never had she looked more radiantly
beautiful than when she stepped to the side of the sick-bed, and took
the hand of Reuben with an eager clasp--that was met, and met again. The
Doctor is in his study, (the open door between,