He thought of nothing but the sick girl before him, whom he had kissed, and whom he now knew that he loved better than anything it life; ay, whom he had loved since the Christmas-time when he first looked into her blue eyes and played for the knot of ribbon she wore at her throat.

Grey had seen much of the world, and many bright eyes had flashed upon him glances which mean so much, but which had never affected him.  Nothing, in fact, had touched him until he saw Bessie McPherson, whom he had remembered always, and sometimes to himself he had said: 

“I will see her again.  I will know her better, and if—­”

He never got farther than that “if,” though he was conscious that in all his pictures of a future home there was a face like hers as he had seen it in the old stone house at Stoneleigh.  He had not sought her again, but he had found her unsought—­sick, helpless, dying perhaps, and he knew how much he loved her, and how dark would be the future if she were snatched from him.

“Oh, Heaven, I can’t let her die!” he cried; and, falling on his knees by the bedside, he prayed long and earnestly that she might live for him, who loved her so devotedly.

This was the night before the second day of the carnival, when Grey felt obliged to leave her for a few hours and do duty at his Aunt Lucy’s side.  Miss Grey had that morning heard rumors of fever in Rome, and with her fears aroused she signified to Grey her wish to leave the city the following Monday.

“You are looking very thin,” she said, regarding him anxiously as he bent over her chair, “and I am not feeling very well myself.  It is time we were out of Rome I am sure it is not healthy here.”

She did look pale, Grey noticed, and, as his first duty was to her, he signified his readiness to leave with her on Monday.

“I shall know the worst by that time,” he thought “If she is better, I can go with a good heart; if she is dead, it matters little where I am.  All places will be the same to me.”

And so it was settled that with his Aunt Lucy he should leave for Florence on the following Monday, and with a heavy heart he said good-by to her when the festivities of the day were over, and went back to his hotel.

CHAPTER II.

FAREWELL.

It was Sunday, and the gay pageant of the carnival was moving through the Via Nazzionale, on which the Hotel du Quirinal stands.  This was the grandest, gayest day of all, and the spectacle which the long street presented, as carriage after carriage, and company after company pressed on, had in it nothing of the calm, quiet repose which we are wont to associate with Sunday.  It was not Sunday to the throng of masqueraders filling the streets, or the multitude of spectators crowding the balconies and windows of the tall houses on either side of the way.  But to the little group of friends gathered in the room