ter? Oh, my child, my darling!"

Instantly he was down upon the grass by her side, assisting Lester's
efforts to restore her to consciousness.

For a moment she engrossed the attention of all, to the utter exclusion
from their thoughts of poor Enna, for whom none of them entertained any
great amount of affection.

"She lives! her heart beats! she will soon recover!" Arthur said
presently, "see, a faint color is coming into her cheek. Run, Pomp, bring
blankets and more help; they must be carried at once to the house."

He turned to his aunt, leaving Mr. Travilla and Lester to attend to Elsie.

Enna seemed gone; he could not be sure that life was not extinct. Perhaps
it were better so, but he would not give up till every possible effort had
been made to restore her.

Both ladies were speedily conveyed to the house, Elsie, already conscious,
committed to the care of her mother and Aunt Chloe, while Arthur, Dr.
Barton and others, used every exertion for Enna's resuscitation. They were
at length successful in fanning to a flame the feeble spark of life that
yet remained, but fever supervened, and for weeks afterward she was very
ill.

Elsie kept her bed for a day, then took her place in the family again,
looking quite herself except a slight paleness. No; a close observer might
have detected another change; a sweet glad light in the beautiful brown
eyes that was not there before; full of peaceful content and quiet
happiness as her young life had been.

Lester's words of passionate love had reached the ear that seemed closed
to all earthly sounds; they were heard as in a dream, but afterward
recalled with a full apprehension of their reality and of all they meant
to her and to him.

Months ago she had read the same sweet story in his eyes, but how sweeter
far it was to have heard it from his lips.

She had sometimes wondered that he held his peace so long, and again had
doubted the language of his looks, but now those doubts were set at rest,
and their next interview was anticipated with a strange flutter of the
heart, a longing for, yet half shrinking from the words he might have to
speak.

But the day passed and he did not come; another and another, and no word
from him. How strange! he was still her preceptor in her art studies; did
he not know that she was well enough to resume them? If not, was it not
his place to inquire?

Perhaps he was ill. Oh, had he risked his health, perhaps his life in
saving hers?