“I wish he was here, indeed,” replied the doctor, with a look of great anxiety.  “Miss Adelaide,” he suddenly exclaimed, “if she were ten years older I should say she was dying of a broken heart, but she is so young the idea is absurd.”

“You are right, doctor! it is nothing but that.  Oh! how I wish Horace would come!” cried Adelaide, walking up and down the room, and wringing her hands.  “Do you notice, doctor,” she asked, stopping before him, “how she watches the opening of the door, and starts and trembles at every sound?  It is killing her, for she is too weak to bear it.  Oh!  If Horace would only come, and set her mind at rest!  He has been displeased with her, and threatened to send her to a convent, of which she has a great horror and dread—­and she idolizes him; and so his anger and his threats have had this sad effect upon her, poor child!”

“Write again, Miss Adelaide, and tell him that her life depends upon his speedy return and a reconciliation with him.  If he would not lose her he must at once relieve her of every fear and anxiety,” said the physician, taking up his hat. “That is the medicine she needs, and the only one that will do her much good.  Good-morning.  I will be in again at noon.”

And Adelaide, scarcely waiting to see him off, rushed away to her room to write to her brother exactly what he had told her, beseeching him, if he had any love for his child, to return immediately.  The paper was all blistered with her tears, for they fell so fast it was with difficulty she could see to write.

“She has spoken from the first as though it were a settled thing that this sickness was to be her last; and now a great, a terrible dread is coming over me that she is right.  Oh, Horace, will you not come and save her?”

Thus Adelaide closed her note; then sealing and despatching it, she returned to the bedside of her little niece.

Elsie lay quietly with her eyes closed, but there was an expression of pain upon her features.  Mrs. Travilla sat beside her, holding one little hand in hers, and gazing with tearful eyes upon the little wan face she had learned to love so well.

Presently those beautiful eyes unclosed, and turned upon her with an expression of anguish that touched her to the very heart.

“What is it, darling—­are you in pain?” she asked, leaning over her, and speaking in tones of the tenderest solicitude.

“Oh!  Mrs. Travilla,” moaned the little girl, “my sins—­my sins—­they are so many—­so black.  ‘Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.’  God says it; and I—­I am not holy—­I am vile—­oh, so vile, so sinful!  Shall I ever see his face? how can I dare to venture into his presence!”

She spoke slowly, gaspingly—­her voice sometimes sinking almost to a whisper; so that, but for the death-like stillness of the room, her words would scarcely have been audible.