“You’ll die when your time comes,” said Jael.  “But you have got a shorter journey before you at present, and that is to Raby Hall.”

“Raby Hall!  I shall never see it again.  I have no strength to move.  I am worn out with the battle of life.  Stay with me here, and close my eyes.”

“Of course I shall stay with you,” said Jael, and began to gossip with every appearance of carelessness.

Next morning, with infinite difficulty, she persuaded the poor jaundiced lady to show her Aberystwith.  She took the tickets herself, and got her patient half-way to Hillsborough; next day, with less difficulty, to Raby Hall.  All had been settled before.  Edith little was shown into her old bedroom, adorned with pyramids of flowers in her honor; and there she found a loving line from Guy, begging her pardon for his past harshness, and telling her she was to send for him as soon as she felt strong enough to meet.

That evening brother and sister were clasped in each other’s arms, and wept tears of affection and regret over each other.

Jael Dence slept on a camp-bed in Mrs. Little’s room, which was very spacious, and watched her, and was always about her.  Under private advice from Dr. Amboyne, she superintended her patient’s diet, and, by soft, indomitable perseverance, compelled her to walk every day, and fight against her fatal lassitude.

Heaven rewarded her by giving her a warm and tender affection for her poor patient that did something to fill her own yearning and desolate heart.

Here I must leave them both for the present, and show how these events affected the main characters of my story.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

Just outside the little sea-side town of Eastbank is a house which, being very old, contrasts agreeably with the pretentious villas fashion has raised.  It is gloomy inside, yet outside it looks like a cottage:  low, rambling, gabled, and picturesque.  It stands on a slope just above the sea, and its front garden runs down almost to the sea-shore.  The aspect is southerly.  The placid sea looks like a beautiful lake; for, about two miles out, a great tongue of land runs across and keeps the tempests out.

The cottage itself was now closed deep with green creepers, and its veranda with jessamine; and the low white walls of the garden were beautiful with vine-leaves and huge fig-leaves, that ran up them and about them, and waved over them in tropical luxuriance.  In short, the house was a very bower, and looked the abode of bliss; and this time last year a young couple had spent their honeymoon there, and left it with a sigh.  But one place sees many minds; and now this sweet place was the bed on which dropped the broken lily of this tale, Grace Carden.

She lay in the warm air of the veranda, and turned her hollow eyes upon the sea; and every day life crept slowly back to her young body, but not to her desolate heart.