How strange it is, that we will still create troubles in a world that already abounds with them!  Here had Mildred lived in a perpetual fever for months together, teazing and fretting himself with anxieties and doubts; whilst, as a reasonable being, he ought to have been as cheerful and as merry as a lark singing at the gate of heaven.  In the midst of his oration, the gentle Margaret resigned her work, and wept.  I say no more.  I will not even add that she had been prepared to weep for months before—­that she had grown half fearful and half angry at the long delay—­that she was woman, and ambitious—­that she had heard of Mildred’s mine of wealth, and longed to share it with him.  Such secrets, gentle reader, might, if revealed, attaint the lady’s character.  I therefore choose to keep them to myself.  It is very certain that Mildred was forthwith accepted, and that, after a courtship of three months, he led to the altar a woman of whose beauty and talents a monarch might justly have been proud.  It is not to the purpose of this narrative to describe the wedding guests and garments—­the sumptuous breakfast—­the continental tour.  It was a fair scene to look at, that auspicious bridal morn.  The lieutenant’s unaffected joy—­the bridegroom’s blissful pride—­the lady’s modesty, and—­shall I call it?—­triumph, struggling through it; these and other matters might employ an idle or a dallying pen, but must not now arrest one busy with more serious work.  Far different are the circumstance and season which call for our regard.  We leave the lovers in their bridal bower, and pensively approach the chamber of sickness and of death.

It is ten years since Mildred wedded.  He is on the verge of sixty, and seems more aged, for he is bowed down with bodily disease and pain.  His wife, not thirty yet, looks not an hour older than when we saw her last, dressed like a queen for her espousal.  She is more beautiful, as the full developed rose in grace surpasses the delicate and still expanding bud; but there she is, the same young Margaret.  How they have passed the married decade, how both fulfilled their several duties, may be gathered from a description of Mildred’s latest moments.  He lies almost exhausted on his bed of suffering, and only at short intervals can find strength to make his wishes known to one who, since he was a boy, has been a faithful and a constant friend.  He is his comforter and physician now.

“You have not told me, Wilford,” said Mildred in a moment of physical repose, “you have not told me yet how long.  Let me, I implore you, hear the truth.  I am not afraid to die.  Is there any hope at all?”

The physician’s lip quivered with affectionate grief; but did not move in answer.

“There is no hope then,” continued the wasting invalid.  “I believe it—­I believe it.  But tell me, dearest friend, how long may this endure?”

“I cannot say,” replied the doctor; “a day or two, perhaps:  I fear not longer, Mildred.”