n't been Esther.

"No? Someone else then? eh! I think I can guess her name. It was mean of
you not to tell me about her, Henry. I hear she's called Angel, and that
she looks like one. I wish I could have seen her before I went away."

"Going away, Myrtilla? why, where? I've heard nothing of it. Tell me
about it."

The atmosphere perceptibly darkened with the thought of Williamson.

"Well!" she said, in the little airy melodious way she had when she was
telling something particularly unhappy about herself--a sort of
harpsichord bravado--"Well, you know, he's taken to fancying himself
seriously ill lately, and the doctors have aided and abetted him; and so
we're going to Davos Platz, or some such health-wilderness--and well,
that's all!"

"And you I suppose are to nurse the--to nurse him?" said Henry,
savagely.

"Hush, lad! It's no use, not a bit! You won't help me that way," she
said, laying her hand kindly on his, and her eyes growing bright with
suppressed tears.

"It's a shame, nevertheless, Myrtilla, a cruel shame!"

"You'd like to say it was a something-else shame, wouldn't you, dear
boy? Well, you can, if you like: but then you must say no more. And if
you really want to help me, you shall send me a long letter now and
again, with some of your new poems enclosed; and tell me what new books
are worth sending for? Will you do that?"

"Of course, I will. That's precious little to do anyhow."

"It's a good deal, really. But be sure you do it."

"And, of course, you'll write to me sometimes. I don't think you know
yet what your letters are to me. I never work so well as when I've had a
letter from you."

"Really, dear lad, I don't fancy you know how happy that makes me to
hear."

"Yes, you take just the sort of interest in my work I want, and that no
one else takes."

"Not even Angel?" said Myrtilla, slily.

"Angel, bless her, loves my work; and is a brave little critic of it;
but then it isn't disloyal to her to say that she doesn't know as much
as you. Besides, she doesn't approach it in quite the same way. She
cares for it, first, because it is mine, and only secondly for its own
sake. Now you care for it just for what it is--"

"I care for it, certainly, for what it's going to be," said Myrtilla,
making one of those honest distinctions which made her opinion so
stimulating to Henry.

"Yes, there you are. You're artistically ambitious for me; you know what
I want to do, even before I know mysel