“Last time?”

“Yes; did you not know that papa has set his heart on going to London to-morrow?  Yes, early to-morrow.  And it will be for ever.  We shall never see Sirenwood again.”

She stood still, almost bent with the agony of suppressed grief.

“I am very sorry; but I do not wonder he wishes for change.”

“He has been in an agony to go these three days.  It was all I could do to get him to stay to-day.  You don’t think it will do Frank harm?  Then I would stay, if I took lodgings in the village; but otherwise—­poor papa—­I think it is my duty—­and he can’t do without me.”

“I think Frank is quite capable of understanding that you are forced to go, and that he need not be the worse for it.”

“And then,” she lowered her voice, “it does a little reconcile me that I don’t think we ought to go further into it till we can understand.  I did make that dreadful vow.  I know I ought not now; but still I did, in so many words.”

“You mean against a gambler?”

“If it had only been against a gambler; but I was stung, and wanted to guard myself, and made it against any one who had ever betted!  If I go on, I must break it, you see, and if I do might it not bring mischief on him?  I don’t even feel as if it were true to have come to him on Friday, and now—­yet they said it was the only chance for his life.”

“Yes, I think it saved him then, and to disappoint him now might quite possibly bring a relapse,” said Julius.  “It seems to me that you can only act as seems right at the moment.  When he is his own man again, you will better have the power of judging about this vow, and if it ought to bind you.  And so, it may really be well you do not see more of him, and that his weakness does not lead you further than you mean.”

A tottering step, and an almost agonized, though very short sob under the crape veil, proved to Julius that his counsel, though chiming in with her stronger, sterner judgment, was terrible to her, nor would he have given it, if he had not had reason to fear that while she had grown up, Frank had grown down; and that, after this illness, it would have to be proved whether he were indeed worthy of the high-minded girl whom he had himself almost thrown over in a passion.

But there was no room for such misgivings when the electric shock of actual presence was felt—­the thin hollow-cheeked face shone with welcome, the liquid brown eyes smiled with thankful sweetness, the fingers, fleshless, but cool and gentle, were held out; and the faint voice said, “My darling!  Once try to make me hear.”

And when, with all her efforts, she could only make him give a sort of smile of disappointment, she would have been stonyhearted indeed if she had not let him fondle her hand as he would, while she listened to his mother’s report of his improvement.  With those eyes fixed in such content on her face, it seemed absolutely barbarous to falter forth that she could come no more, for her father was taking her away.