, hot summer-time she brought them fruit
and flowers from her home out of town; and when she came not herself, if
the carriage was in the city it stopped with these same delightful
burdens. Sallie declared her an angel, and Frank, with his mouth stuffed
full, stood ready to echo the assertion.

So the heated term wore away,--before it ended, telling heavily on
Sallie. Her anxiety about Jim, her close confinement and constant work,
the fever everywhere in the spiritual air through that first terrible
summer of the war, bore her down.

"You need rest," said Miss Ercildoune to her one day, looking at her
with kindly solicitude,--"rest, and change, and fresh air, and freedom
from care. I can't give you the last, but I can the first if you will
accept them. You need some country living."

"O Miss Ercildoune, will you let me do your work at your own home? I
know it would do me good just to be under the same roof with you, and
then I should have all the things you speak of combined and another one
added. If you only will!"

This was not the plan Francesca had proposed to herself. She had
intended sending Sallie away to some pleasant country or seaside place,
till she was refreshed and ready to come to her work once more. Sallie
did not know what to make of the expression of the face that watched
her, nor of the exclamation, "Why not? let me try her." But she had not
long to consider, for Miss Ercildoune added, "Be it so. I will send in
for you to-morrow, and you shall stay till you are better and stronger,
or--till you please to come home,"--the last words spoken in a bitter
and sorrowful tone.

The next day Sallie found her way to the superb home of her employer.
Superb it was, in every sense. Never before had she been in such a
delightful region, never before realized how absolutely perfect breeding
sets at ease all who come within the charm of its magic
sphere,--employed, acquaintance, or friend.

There was a shadow, however, in this house,--a shadow, the premonition
of which she had seen more than once on the face of its mistress ere she
ever beheld her home; a shadow to which, for a few days, she had no
clew, but which was suddenly explained by the arrival of the master of
this beautiful habitation; a shadow from which most people would have
fled as from the breath of a pestilence, or the shade of the tomb; nay,
one from which, but a few short months before, Sallie herself would have
sped with feet from which she w