her seat, "let us go to him!—what can we do? Let me find my grandmother!"
Lavinia gently detained her. "Walter Maynard," continued she, "is far beyond all human help; his days—ay, his very hours are numbered: but you may fling over them one last gleam of human happiness."
"I!" cried Ethel.
"You—you whom he has loved so long, so truly! You saw it not, you thought only of another; but Walter Maynard loved your very shadow; and such have you been to him through life."
Ethel stood breathless with surprise; she looked back to Walter with the affectionate regard which lingers around one whom we have known in early life, and have never seen since. Of late, her imagination had dwelt upon him with that picturesque interest with which we are apt to invest the writer whose pages appeal to our feelings.
Lavinia saw her emotion, and added, "Not that your name ever passed his lips; save in the muttered wish of this morning, he never spoke
