‘Do you know why I stay to vex and trouble you?’ she asked Caroline.  ’Well, then, it is that I may see your brother united to you all:  and then I shall go, happy.’

The pretext served also to make him the subject of many conversations.  Twice a week a bunch of the best flowers that could be got were sorted and arranged by her, and sent namelessly to brighten Evan’s chamber.

‘I may do such a thing as this, you know, without incurring blame,’ she said.

The sight of a love so humble in its strength and affluence, sent Caroline to Evan on a fruitless errand.  What availed it, that accused of giving lead to his pride in refusing the heiress, Evan should declare that he did not love her?  He did not, Caroline admitted as possible, but he might.  He might learn to love her, and therefore he was wrong in wounding her heart.  She related flattering anecdotes.  She drew tearful pictures of Juliana’s love for him:  and noticing how he seemed to prize his bouquet of flowers, said: 

‘Do you love them for themselves, or the hand that sent them?’

Evan blushed, for it had been a struggle for him to receive them, as he thought, from Rose in secret.  The flowers lost their value; the song that had arisen out of them, ‘Thou livest in my memory,’ ceased.  But they came still.  How many degrees from love gratitude may be, I have not reckoned.  I rather fear it lies on the opposite shore.  From a youth to a girl, it may yet be very tender; the more so, because their ages commonly exclude such a sentiment, and nature seems willing to make a transition stage of it.  Evan wrote to Juliana.  Incidentally he expressed a wish to see her.  Juliana was under doctor’s interdict:  but she was not to be prevented from going when Evan wished her to go.  They met in the park, as before, and he talked to her five minutes through the carriage window.

‘Was it worth the risk, my poor child?’ said Caroline, pityingly.

Juliana cried:  ‘Oh!  I would give anything to live!’

A man might have thought that she made no direct answer.

’Don’t you think I am patient?  Don’t you think I am very patient?’she asked Caroline, winningly, on their way home.

Caroline could scarcely forbear from smiling at the feverish anxiety she showed for a reply that should confirm her words and hopes.

’So we must all be!’she said, tend that common-place remark caused Juliana to exclaim:  ’Prisoners have lived in a dungeon, on bread and water, for years!’

Whereat Caroline kissed her so tenderly that Juliana tried to look surprised, and failing, her thin lips quivered; she breathed a soft ‘hush,’ and fell on Caroline’s bosom.

She was transparent enough in one thing; but the flame which burned within her did not light her through.

Others, on other matters, were quite as transparent to her.