y the afternoon--and,
in the evenings, sometimes reading, sometimes singing, sometimes nothing
but the lazy luxury of talk. In the vast world of London, with its
monstrous extremes of wealth and poverty, and its all-permeating malady
of life at fever-heat, there was one supremely innocent and supremely
happy creature. Sally had heard of Heaven, attainable on the hard
condition of first paying the debt of death. "I have found a kinder
Heaven," she said, one day. "It is here in the cottage; and Amelius has
shown me the way to it."

Their social isolation was at this time complete: they were two
friendless people, perfectly insensible to all that was perilous and
pitiable in their own position. They parted with a kiss at night, and
they met again with a kiss in the morning--and they were as happily free
from all mistrust of the future as a pair of birds. No visitors came to
the house; the few friends and acquaintances of Amelius, forgotten
by him, forgot him in return. Now and then, Toff's wife came to the
cottage, and exhibited the "cherubim-baby." Now and then, Toff himself
(a musician among his other accomplishments) brought his fiddle
upstairs; and, saying modestly, "A little music helps to pass the time,"
played to the young master and mistress the cheerful tinkling tunes
of the old vaudevilles of France. They were pleased with these small
interruptions when they came; and they were not disappointed when the
days passed, and the baby and the vaudevilles were hushed in absence and
silence. So the happy winter time went by; and the howling winds brought
no rheumatism with them, and even the tax-gatherer himself, looking
in at this earthly paradise, departed without a curse when he left his
little paper behind him.

Now and then, at long intervals, the outer world intruded itself in the
form of a letter.

Regina wrote, always with the same placid affection; always entering
into the same minute narrative of the slow progress of "dear uncle's"
return to health. He was forbidden to exert himself in any way. His
nerves were in a state of lamentable irritability. "I dare not even
mention your name to him, dear Amelius; it seems, I cannot think why, to
make him--oh, so unreasonably angry. I can only submit, and pray that
he may soon be himself again." Amelius wrote back, always in the same
considerate and gentle tone; always laying the blame of his dull letters
on the studious uniformity of his life. He preserved, with a pe