blame,' she
said.

The sight of a love so humble in its strength and affluence, sent
Caroline to Evan on a fruitless errand. What availed it, that accused
of giving lead to his pride in refusing the heiress, Evan should declare
that he did not love her? He did not, Caroline admitted as possible,
but he might. He might learn to love her, and therefore he was wrong in
wounding her heart. She related flattering anecdotes. She drew tearful
pictures of Juliana's love for him: and noticing how he seemed to prize
his bouquet of flowers, said:

'Do you love them for themselves, or the hand that sent them?'

Evan blushed, for it had been a struggle for him to receive them, as
he thought, from Rose in secret. The flowers lost their value; the song
that had arisen out of them, 'Thou livest in my memory,' ceased. But
they came still. How many degrees from love gratitude may be, I have not
reckoned. I rather fear it lies on the opposite shore. From a youth to
a girl, it may yet be very tender; the more so, because their ages
commonly exclude such a sentiment, and nature seems willing to make a
transition stage of it. Evan wrote to Juliana. Incidentally he expressed
a wish to see her. Juliana was under doctor's interdict: but she was not
to be prevented from going when Evan wished her to go. They met in the
park, as before, and he talked to her five minutes through the carriage
window.

'Was it worth the risk, my poor child?' said Caroline, pityingly.

Juliana cried: 'Oh! I would give anything to live!'

A man might have thought that she made no direct answer.

'Don't you think I am patient? Don't you think I am very patient?'she
asked Caroline, winningly, on their way home.

Caroline could scarcely forbear from smiling at the feverish anxiety she
showed for a reply that should confirm her words and hopes.

'So we must all be!'she said, tend that common-place remark caused
Juliana to exclaim: 'Prisoners have lived in a dungeon, on bread and
water, for years!'

Whereat Caroline kissed her so tenderly that Juliana tried to look
surprised, and failing, her thin lips quivered; she breathed a soft
'hush,' and fell on Caroline's bosom.

She was transparent enough in one thing; but the flame which burned
within her did not light her through.

Others, on other matters, were quite as transparent to her.

Caroline never knew that she had as much as told her the moral suicide
Evan had committed at Beckley; so cunningly had she b