pardons me, I suppose! Get me my broth, and don't be long!"
Arabella came back, closing the door; and while she busied herself with that precious saucepan on the hob—to which the Marchioness of Montfort had become a very secondary object—she said, looking toward Caroline from under her iron-gray ringlets—
"You heard—he misses me! He can't bear me out of his sight now—me, me! You heard!"
Meekly Lady Montfort advanced, bringing in her hand the tray with the broth basin.
"Yes, I heard! I must not keep you; but let me help while I stay."
So the broth was poured forth and prepared, and with it Arabella disappeared. She returned in a few minutes, beckoned to Caroline, and said in a low voice—
"Come in—say you forgive him! Oh, you need not fear him; a babe could not fear him now!"
Caroline followed Arabella into the sick-room. No untidiness there; all so carefully, thoughtfully arranged. A pleasant room, too—with windows looking full on the sunniest side of the Vale of Health; the hearth so cheerily clear, swept so clean—the very ashes out of sight; flowers—costly exotics—on the table, on the mantel-piece; the couch drawn toward the window; and on that couch, in the gay rich dressing-gown of former days, warm coverlets heaped on the feet, snow-white pillows propping the head, lay what at first seemed a vague, undistinguishable mass—lay, what, as the step advanced, and the eye became more accurately searching, grew into Jasper Losely.
Yes! there, too weak indeed for a babe to fear, lay all that was left of the Strong Man! No enemy but himself had brought him thus low—spendthrift, and swindler, and robber of his own priceless treasures—Health and Strength—those grand rent-rolls of joy which Nature had made his inheritance. As a tree that is crumbling to dust under gnarls of its bark, seems, the moment ere it falls, proof against time and the tempest;—so, within all decayed, stood that image of strength—so, air scarcely stirring, it fell. "And the pitcher was broken at the fountain; and the wheel was broken at the cistern. Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher."
Jasper turned his dull eye toward Caroline, as she came softly to his side, and looked at her with a piteous gaze. The stroke that had shattered the form had spared the face; and illness and compulsory abstinence from habitual stimulants had
