d beautiful. Her
head is turned also, but in another, a more agreeable direction.
She is greatly attached to him, the dear child! She is frail. He
must speak to the doctor about her. Perhaps send her to Italy.
With whom? With her mother? He would never permit that. The child
is his. He will go himself with Cara. But in that case what will
become of his enterprise?

In the interior of the mansion were heard deep, metallic sounds.
The clock struck five.

In that same mansion, at the distant end of it, in a chamber
lighted by a blue night-lamp, was heard a low, dry cough, and a
frail, tall maiden, in night-clothing covered with lace, sat up
in a blue and white bed.

"Miss Mary! Miss Mary!" cried she, with fear in her voice.

From the adjoining chamber came a voice of agreeable tone and
somewhat drowsy:

"You are not asleep, Cara?"

"I have slept. The cough woke me, but that is well, for I had a
dreadful dream. I dreamed that papa and mamma--"

She stopped suddenly, and, though no one was looking at her, she
hid her delicate face in the blue coverlet. So only in a whisper
did she tell the end of her dream:

"They were angry at each other--so awfully angry--Ira put her
arms around mamma--Maryan went away hissing. I hung to papa, and
cried so, and cried."

In fact her eyes were then filled with tears from the dream. But
she stretched in the bed, and, with her head on the pillows,
thought, till she called again:

"Miss Mary! Are you sleeping?"

"No, dear; do you wish anything?"

Cara began in a loud voice:

"I wish immensely, immensely, Miss Mary, to go with you to
England, to your father and mother. Oh, how I should like to be
in that parsonage a while, where your sisters teach poor children
and nurse the sick, and your mother makes tea at the grate for
your father when he comes home after services. Oh, Mary, if you
and I could go to that place! It is so pleasant there." In the
blue light and in the silence her thin voice recalled the
twittering of a lark.

"We will go there sometime, dear. Your parents will permit, and
we will go. But sleep now."

"Very well, I will sleep. Good-night, Miss Mary--my dear, good
Miss Mary."

She lay some minutes quietly thinking, till she sat up again in
bed coughing. When the cough had passed, she called in a low
voice:

"Miss Mary! Miss Mary!"

There was no answer.

"She is sleeping," whispered Cara, and after a while she looked
around, and, in a lower voice, ca