me, looking me in the face with
his own all aglow.

Then he told me that he had been longing for weeks, as I must have seen,
to open his mind to me; but, till that day, he had not been at liberty.
He had regarded me, from almost the very beginning of our acquaintance,
as his best and trustiest friend,--in short, as just what dear Emma had
told him he should find me. My friendship had been a blessing to him in
every way; and now my sympathy, or participation, was all he wanted to
render his happiness complete. He had just been admitted as a partner in
_the store_ of the village, in which he had hitherto been only a
salesman; and now, therefore, he was at last free to offer himself,
before all the world, to the girl he loved best; and that was--I must
guess who. He called me "dearest Katy," and asked me if he might not
"to-day, at last."

I bowed, but did not utter my guess. He seemed to think I had done so,
notwithstanding; for he hurried on, delighted. "Of course it is, 'Katy
darling,' as we always call you! I never knew your penetration out of
the way. It _is_ Emma Holly! It couldn't be anybody but Emma Holly!"

Then he told me that she had begged hard for leave to tell me outright,
what she thought she had hinted plainly enough, about their hopes; but
her father was afraid that to have them get abroad would hurt her
prospects in other quarters, and made silence towards all others a
condition of her correspondence with Jim. Mr. Holly was "aristocratic,"
and in hopes Emma would change her mind, Jim supposed; but all danger
was over now. He could maintain her like the lady she was; and their
long year's probation was ended. Then he told me in what agonies he had
passed several evenings a fortnight before, (when I must have wondered
why he did not come and read,) from hearing of her illness. The doctors
were right for once, to be sure, as it proved, in thinking it only the
measles; but it might just as well have been spotted fever, or
small-pox, or anything fatal, for all they knew.

And then I rather think there must have been a pause, which I did not
fill properly, because my head was aching with a peculiar sensation
which I had never known before, though I have sometimes since.--It is
like the very hand of Death, laid with a strong grasp on the joint and
meeting-point of soul and body, and makes one feel, for the time being,
as Dr. Livingstone says he did when the lion shook him,--a merciful
indifference as to any