“I do not wish to get interested in anything you read, for then I would keep awake to listen; but the sleep you bring me is better than all my medicine, I set nurse reading to me one day; but her voice was uncultivated, and her emphasis intolerable I should soon be well if you would read to me all the time.”

“I never heard of any one getting raised from a sick-bed by so simple a remedy.”

“You do not try to encourage me,” she said, fretfully.

I read on to her day after day until my voice grew husky, and the mere act of speaking often wearied me.

We all saw the end was rapidly approaching, but no one had the courage to tell her.  She got so angry with me one day when I suggested bringing Mr. Lathrop to visit her, that I slipped quietly away to escape the storm I had raised.  I used to go and return with a sense of defeat that paralyzed all hopeful enthusiasm, and fearing that Mr. Winthrop’s displeasure had probably been a second time incurred, without any corresponding gain to debit the loss.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

The sound of marriage bells.

I came home one day more dispirited than usual.  I had found Mrs. Le Grande weaker than ever, and yet she was clinging tenaciously to life, and had that morning dictated an order to her dress-maker in New York for a most elaborate costume.  When I tried to urge her to think of something more enduring than the raiment whose fashion and beauty soon changes, she forbade me mentioning such a thing again in her presence, nor would she listen to the Scripture reading on which I always insisted as the one condition on which I would read to her at all.  I knew my own words were powerless to break the crust of worldliness and selfishness that bound her heart, but I hoped God’s word might pierce it.  Hubert had returned from college a few days before, and just as I entered the oak avenue from the little footpath through the wood, I met him cantering along on Faery.

“A stranger has just arrived whom you will be surprised to see,” he called to me.

“Any one I know?” I asked carelessly.

“I should say it was; and one whom you will be glad to see, if I am not mistaken.”

“Won’t you tell me who it is and so prolong my pleasure, for I am not going direct to the house.  I intend taking a stroll through the garden to try and get some unhappy fancies brushed away by the blossoms.”

“Anticipation is said to exceed realization, so I will generously leave you the former,” he said, giving Faery the whip and cantering rapidly away.