“No, no! give it me!” he cried; “there is a tear of yours in it.”  He drank off the bitter remedy now as if it had been nectar.

Josephine blushed.

“If you wanted me to live, why did you not come here before?”

“I did not think you would be so foolish, so wicked, so cruel as to do what you have been doing.”

“Come and shine upon me every day, and you shall have no fresh cause of complaint; things flourish in the sunshine that die in the dark:  Rose, it is as if the sun had come into my prison; you are pale, but you are beautiful as ever—­more beautiful; what a sweet dress! so quiet, so modest, it sets off your beauty instead of vainly trying to vie with it.”  With this he put out his hand and took her gray silk dress, and went to kiss it as a devotee kisses the altar steps.

She snatched it away with a shudder.

“Yes, you are right,” said she; “thank you for noticing my dress; it is a beautiful dress—­ha! ha!  A dress I take a pride in wearing, and always shall, I hope.  I mean to be buried in it.  Come, Rose.  Thank you, Camille; you are very good, you have once more promised me to live.  Get well; come down-stairs; then you will see me every day, you know—­there is a temptation.  Good-by, Camille!—­are you coming, Rose?  What are you loitering for?  God bless you, and comfort you, and help you to forget what it is madness to remember!”

With these wild words she literally fled; and in one moment the room seemed to darken to Camille.

Outside the door Josephine caught hold of Rose.  “Have I committed myself?”

“Over and over again.  Do not look so terrified; I mean to me, but not to him.  How blind he is! and how much better you must know him than I do to venture on such a transparent deceit.  He believes whatever you tell him.  He is all ears and no eyes.  Yes, love, I watched him keenly all the time.  He really thinks it is pity and remorse, nothing more.  My poor sister, you have a hard life to lead, a hard game to play; but so far you have succeeded; yet could look poor Raynal in the face if he came home to-day.”

“Then God be thanked!” cried Josephine.  “I am as happy to-day as I can ever hope to be.  Now let us go through the farce of dressing—­it is near dinner-time—­and then the farce of talking, and, hardest of all, the farce of living.”

From that hour Camille began to get better very slowly, yet perceptibly.

The doctor, afraid of being mistaken, said nothing for some days, but at last he announced the good news at the dinner-table.  “He is to come down-stairs in three days,” added the doctor.

But I am sorry to say that as Camille’s body strengthened some of the worst passions in our nature attacked him.  Fierce gusts of hate and love combined overpowered this man’s high sentiments of honor and justice, and made him clench his teeth, and vow never to leave Beaurepaire without Josephine.  She had been his four years before she ever saw this interloper, and she should be his forever.  Her love would soon revive when they should meet every day, and she would end by eloping with him.