for his future life, and busy all day with head and hands over his preparations for leaving England in the autumn.  But when Stephen talked to him of Adelais, and told him she was gone to the sea-side, Maurice only laughed and answered lightly, that she was a sweet lovable girl, and that he grieved to hear of her illness; no doubt the southern breezes would bring back the color to her cheeks, and he should hear before he had been long gone that she was quite well and strong again.  At least he hoped so.

“Then, Maurice, you don’t care to see her once more before you sail?  You don’t want to say goodbye?”

“O well, if she’s here, of course, but that’s another thing; I wouldn’t for worlds have her come back to Kensington just to bid me goodbye.  And really you know, Steenie, I’ve too much to do just now to be running about and saying farewells everywhere.  The time that’s left me now to be at home with you and my father is none too long.  What is Adelais Cameron to me, when all my world is here?”

“Maurice,” said Stephen again, in a voice that sounded strained and hard, like the voice of an old man trying to be young; “you’re a dear affectionate fellow, and as things are, perhaps this is all very well.  But supposing Adelais loved you, and my father and—­ and—­everybody else you know, wished her to be your wife, how would you feel towards her then?  Supposing, Maurice—­only for the sake of supposing, of course.”

“What a strange fellow you are, Steenie!  Why, supposing as you say, such a very wild improbable circumstance were to occur, I should be heartily sorry for poor Adelais!  Only imagine me with such a wife as she would make!  Why I wouldn’t have so transparent, white-skinned a beauty about my house all day for a mine of gold!  I should be seized with lunacy before long, through mere contemplation of her very unearthliness, and be goaded into fancying her a picture, and hanging her up framed and glazed over my drawing-room mantelpiece!  No, no, I’ll leave Miss Cameron for you, you’re just her style, I take it; but as for me, I never thought of marrying yet, Steenie, for I never yet had the luck or ill-luck to fall in love, and certainly you’ll allow that nobody ought to think of marriage until he’s really in love.  So I’ll wish you all success, old boy, and mind you write and tell me how the wooing gets on!”

O Maurice!  Maurice!

Then, by-and-by, the young officer sailed, and Adelais heard of his going, and her heart died within her for greatness of sorrow and pain, yet still she held her peace, and lived her life in patience.

And so for two whole years they kept her by the sea, hoping against hope, and whispering those idle convictions that affection always suggests, about the worst being over now, and the time of convalescence being always tedious and unpromising.  But in the third year, when the autumn days grew darker, and the sun set redder in the sea, and people began to talk again of Christmas, Adelais called her brother one evening and said:—­