feel anything I touch.  I declare to you, dearest one, I had no idea my sister was here.  I was surprised when I heard her name mentioned by my landlady, and looked on the bed; suddenly my strength was gone, and it changed all that I was thinking.  I never knew before that women were so weak, but now I see they are, and I only know I am at my Edward’s mercy, and am stupid!  Oh, so wretched and stupid.  I shall not touch food till I hear from you.  Oh, if, you are angry, write so; but do write.  My suspense would make you pity me.  I know I deserve your anger.  It was not that I do not trust you, Edward.  My mother in heaven sees my heart and that I trust, I trust my heart and everything I am and have to you.  I would almost wish and wait to see you to-day in the Gardens, but my crying has made me such a streaked thing to look at.  If I had rubbed my face with a scrubbing-brush, I could not look worse, and I cannot risk your seeing me.  It would excuse you for hating me.  Do you?  Does he hate her?  She loves you.  She would die for you, dear Edward.  Oh!  I feel that if I was told to-day that I should die for you to-morrow, it would be happiness.  I am dying—­yes, I am dying till I hear from you.

                         “Believe me,
                    “Your tender, loving, broken-hearted,

“Dahlia.”

     There was a postscript:—­

     “May I still go to lessons?”

Edward finished the letter with a calmly perusing eye.  He had winced triflingly at one or two expressions contained in it; forcible, perhaps, but not such as Mrs. Lovell smiling from the wall yonder would have used.

“The poor child threatens to eat no dinner, if I don’t write to her,” he said; and replied in a kind and magnanimous spirit, concluding—­“Go to lessons, by all means.”

Having accomplished this, he stood up, and by hazard fell to comparing the rival portraits; a melancholy and a comic thing to do, as you will find if you put two painted heads side by side, and set their merits contesting, and reflect on the contest, and to what advantages, personal, or of the artist’s, the winner owes the victory.  Dahlia had been admirably dealt with by the artist; the charm of pure ingenuousness without rusticity was visible in her face and figure.  Hanging there on the wall, she was a match for Mrs. Lovell.

CHAPTER VII

Rhoda returned home the heavier for a secret that she bore with her.  All through the first night of her sleeping in London, Dahlia’s sobs, and tender hugs, and self-reproaches, had penetrated her dreams, and when the morning came she had scarcely to learn that Dahlia loved some one.  The confession was made; but his name was reserved.  Dahlia spoke of him with such sacredness of respect that she seemed lost in him, and like a creature kissing his feet.  With tears rolling down her cheeks, and with moans