“And then will I go off to the second story and leave you?”

“No, indeed —­ Fetch something that you can lay on the floor, and stay here with me.”

Which Clam presently did; nothing more than a blanket however; and remarked as she curled herself down with her head upon her arm,

“Ain’t he a handsome man, Miss ’Lizabeth?”

“Who? —­” ungraciously enough.

“Why, the Governor.”

“Yes, for aught I know.  Lie still and go to sleep, Clam, if you can; and let me.”

Very promptly Clam obeyed this command; but her less happy mistress, as soon as the deep drawn breaths told her she was alone again, sat up on her sofa to get in a change of posture a change from pain.

How alone! —­ In the parlour after midnight, with the lamps burning as if the room were gay with company; herself, in her morning dress, on the sofa for a night’s rest, and there on her blanket on the carpet, Clam already taking it.  How it told the story, of illness and watching and desertion and danger; how it put life and death in near and strong contrast; and the summer wind blew in through the blinds and pushed the blinds themselves gently out into the room, just as Elizabeth had seen and felt in many a bright and happy hour not so long past.  The same summer breath, and the summer so different!  Elizabeth could hardly bear it.  She longed to rush up stairs where there was somebody; but then she must not; and then the remembrance that somebody was there quieted her again.  That thought stirred another train, the old contrast between him and herself, the contrast between his condition and hers, now brought more painfully than ever home.  “He is ready to meet anything,” she thought, —­ “nothing can come amiss to him; —­ he is as ready for that world as for this —­ and more!” —­

The impression of the words he had read that evening came back to her afresh, and the recollection of the face with which he had read them, —­ calm, happy, and at rest; —­ and Elizabeth threw herself off the sofa and kneeled down to lay her head and arms upon it, in mere agony of wish to change something, or rather of the felt want that something should be changed.  O that she were at peace like him!  O that she had like him a sure home and possession beyond the reach of sickness and death!  O that she were that rectified, self-contained, pure, strong spirit, that he was! —­ The utmost of passionate wish was in the tears that wept out these yearnings of heart —­ petitions they half were, —­ for her mind in giving them form, had a half look to the only possible power that could give them fruition.  But it was with only the refreshment of tears and exhaustion that she laid herself on her couch and went to sleep.

Clam had carried away her blanket bed and put out the lamps, before Elizabeth awoke the next morning.  It was a question whether the room looked drearier by night or by day.  She got up and went to the window.  Clam had pulled up the blinds.  The light of the summer morning was rising again, but it shone only without; all was darkness inside.  Except that light-surrounded watcher up stairs.  How Elizabeth’s heart blessed him.