er natural manner.
"It does not matter,--why should it? There is no one here to be shocked.
I was only wondering."

But the shadow did not quite leave her face, and even when, an hour
later, Euphemia bade her good-by and left her, promising to return again
as soon as possible, it was there still.

She was very, very quiet for a few minutes after she found herself
alone. She clasped her hands behind her head, and lay back in the light
chair, looking out of the window. She was thinking so deeply that she
did not even stir for a while; but in the end she got up, as though
moved by some impulse, and crossed the room.

Against the wall hung a long, narrow mirror, and she went to this mirror
and stood before it, looking at herself from head to foot,--at her
piteously sharpened face, with its large, wondering eyes, eyes that
wondered at themselves,--at the small, light figure so painfully
etherealized, and about which the white wrapper hung so loosely. She
even held up, at last, the slender hand and arm; but when she saw these
uplifted, appealing, as it were, for this sad, new face which did not
seem her own, she broke into a little cry of pain and grief.

"If you could see me now," she said, "if you should come here by chance
and see me now, my dear, I think you would not wait to ask whether I had
been true or false. I never laid this white cheek on your shoulder, did
I? Oh, what a changed face it is! I know I was never very pretty, though
you thought so and were proud of me in your tender way, but I was not
like this in those dear old days. Grif, Grif, would you know me,--would
you _know_ me?" And, turning to her chair again, she dropped upon her
knees before it, and knelt there sobbing.

CHAPTER XVI. ~ IF YOU SHOULD DIE.

THE postman paid frequent visits to Bloomsbury Place during these summer
weeks. At first Dolly wrote often herself, but later it seemed to
fall to Miss MacDowlas to answer Aimee's weekly letters and Mollie's
fortnightly ones. And that lady was a faithful correspondent, and did
her duty as readily as was possible, giving all the news, and recording
all Dolly's messages, and issuing regular bulletins on the subject of
her health. "Your sister," she sometimes wrote, "is not so well, and I
have persuaded her to allow me to be her amanuensis." Or, "Your sister
is tired after a rather long drive, and I have persuaded her to
rest while I write at her dictation." Or sometimes, "Dolly is rather
stronge