“I never knew,” said the Colonel; “all my aunt’s latter letters spoke of your slow improvement beyond hope.”

“True, in her time, I had not reached the point where I stopped.  The last time I saw her I was still upstairs; and, indeed, I did not half know what I could do till I tried.”

“Yes,” said he, brightened by that buoyant look so remarkable in her face; “and you will yet do more, Ermine.  You have convinced me that we shall be all the happier together—­”

“But that was not what I meant to convince you of—­” she said, faintly.

“Not what you meant, perhaps; but what it did convince me was, that you—­as you are, my Ermine—­are ten thousand times more to me than even as the beautiful girl, and that there never can be a happier pair than we shall be when I am your hands and feet.”

Ermine sat up, and rallied all her forces, choked back the swelling of her throat, and said, “Dear Colin, it cannot be!  I trusted you were understanding that when I told you how it was with me.”

He could not speak from consternation.

“No,” she said; “it would be wrong in me to think of it for an instant.  That you should have done so, shows—­O Colin, I cannot talk of it; but it would be as ungenerous in me to consent, as it is noble of you to propose it.”

“It is no such thing,” he answered; “it has been the one object and thought of my life, the only hope I have had all these years.”

“Exactly so,” she said, struggling again to speak firmly; “and that is the very thing.  You kept your allegiance to the bright, tall, walking, active girl, and it would be a shame in the scorched cripple to claim it.”

“Don’t call yourself names.  Have I not told you that you are more than the same?”

“You do not know.  You are pleased because my face is not burnt, nor grown much older, and because I can talk and laugh in the same voice still.” (Oh, how it quivered!) “But it would be a wicked mockery in me to pretend to be the wife you want.  Yes, I know you think you do, but that is just because my looks are so deceitful, and you have kept on thinking about me; but you must make a fresh beginning.”

“You can tell me that,” he said, indignantly.

“Because it is not new to me,” she said; “the quarter of an hour you stood by me, with that deadly calm in your white face, was the real farewell to the young hopeful dream of that bright summer.  I wish it was as calm now.”

“I believed you dying then,” answered he.

“Do not make me think it would have been better for you if I had been,” she said, imploringly.  “It was as much the end, and I knew it from the time my recovery stopped short.  I would have let you know if I could, and then you would not have been so much shocked.”

“So as to cut me off from you entirely?”

“No, indeed.  The thought of seeing you again was too—­too overwhelming to be indulged in; knowing, as I did, that if you were the same to me, it must be at this sad cost to you,” and her eyes filled with tears.