As I asked myself this question, with an unerring premonition that the time would soon come when my mother and I would be separated, I heard her tapping lightly at the door.  She was not in the habit of leaving her guests, and I was surprised and perplexed at seeing her.

“Your father and Mrs. Murray are having a game of chess,” she said, answering my look of astonishment.  “We can be alone together half an hour.  And now tell me what is the matter?  There is something going wrong with you.”

She sank down weariedly into a chair, and I knelt down beside her.  It was almost harder to tell her than to tell Julia; but it was worse than useless to put off the evil moment.  Better for her to hear all from me before a whisper reached her from any one else.

“Johanna came here,” she continued, “with a face as grave as a judge, and asked for Julia in a melancholy voice.  Has there been any quarrel between you two?”

She was accustomed to our small quarrels, and to setting them right again; for we were prone to quarrel in a cousinly fashion, without much real bitterness on either side, but with such an intimate and irritating knowledge of each other’s weak points, that we needed a peace-maker at hand.

“Mother, I am not going to marry my cousin Julia,” I said.

“So I have heard before,” she answered, with a faint smile.  “Come, come, Martin! it is too late to talk boyish nonsense like this.”

“But I love somebody else,” I said, warmly, for my heart throbbed at the thought of Olivia; “and I told Julia so this afternoon.  It is broken off for good now, mother.”

She gave me no answer, and I looked up into her dear face in alarm.  It had grown rigid, and a peculiar blue tinge of pallor was spreading over it.  Her head had fallen back against the chair.  I had never seen her look so death-like in any of her illnesses, and I sprang to my feet in terror.  She stopped me by a slight convulsive pressure of her hand, as I was about to unfasten her brooch and open her dress to give her air.

“No, Martin,” she whispered, “I shall be better in a moment.”

But it was several minutes before she breathed freely and naturally, or could lift up her head.  Then she did not look at me, but lifted up her eyes to the pale evening sky, and her lips quivered with agitation.

“Martin, it will be the death of me,” she said; and a few tears stole down her cheeks, which I wiped away.

“It shall not be the death of you,” I exclaimed.  “If Julia is willing to marry me, knowing the whole truth, I am ready to marry her for your sake, mother.  I would do any thing for your sake.  But Johanna said she ought to be told, and I think it was right myself.”

“Who is it, who can it be that you love?” she asked.

“Mother,” I said, “I wish I had told you before, but I did not know that I loved the girl as I do, till I saw her yesterday in Sark, and Captain Carey charged me with it.”