n hoping for poor Lavvie, just the same as
ever!"

What could old Mr. Blyth, what could any man of heart and honor,
oppose to such an answer as this? Nothing. The marriage took place; and
Valentine's father tried hard, and not altogether vainly, to feel as
sanguine about future results as Valentine himself.

For several months--how short the time seemed, when they looked back on
it in after-years!--the happiness of the painter and his wife more than
fulfilled the brightest hopes which they had formed as lovers. As for
the doctor's cautious words, they were hardly remembered now; or, if
recalled, were recalled only to be laughed over. But the time of
bitter grief, which had been appointed, though they knew it not, came
inexorably, even while they were still lightly jesting at all medical
authority round the painter's fireside. Lavinia caught a severe cold.
The cold turned to rheumatism, to fever, then to general debility, then
to nervous attacks--each one of these disorders, being really but so
many false appearances, under which the horrible spinal malady was
treacherously and slowly advancing in disguise.

When the first positive symptoms appeared, old Mr. Blyth acted with
all his accustomed generosity towards his son. "My purse is yours,
Valentine," said he; "open it when you like; and let Lavinia, while
there is a chance for her, have the same advice and the same remedies as
if she was the greatest duchess in the land." The old man's affectionate
advice was affectionately followed. The most renowned doctors in England
prescribed for Lavinia; everything that science and incessant attention
could do, was done; but the terrible disease still baffled remedy after
remedy, advancing surely and irresistibly, until at last the doctors
themselves lost all hope. So far as human science could foretell events,
Mrs. Blyth, in the opinion of all her medical advisers, was doomed for
the rest of her life never to rise again from the bed on which she lay;
except, perhaps, to be sometimes moved to the sofa, or, in the event of
some favorable reaction, to be wheeled about occasionally in an invalid
chair.

What the shock of this intelligence was, both to husband and wife, no
one ever knew; they nobly kept it a secret even from each other. Mrs.
Blyth was the first to recover courage and calmness. She begged, as an
especial favor, that Valentine would seek consolation, where she knew he
must find it sooner or later, by going back to