She pressed her lips against Agnes’ cheek when she had concluded, and Agnes almost started, for that lip hitherto so glowing and warm, felt hard and cold as marble.

Osborne, who for some time past had spent almost every day at Mr. Sinclair’s, arrived the next morning ere the family had concluded breakfast.  Jane immediately left the table, for she had tasted nothing but a cup of tea, and placing herself beside him on the sofa, looked up mournfully into his face for more than a minute; she then caught his hand, and placing it between hers, gazed upon him again, and smiled.  The boy saw at once that the smile was a smile of misery, and that the agony of separation was likely to be too much for her to bear.  The contrast at that moment between them both was remarkable.  She pale, cold, and almost abstracted from the perception of her immediate grief; he glowing in the deep carmine of youth and apparent health—­his eye as well as hers sparkling with a light which the mere beauty of early life never gives.  Alas, poor things! little did they, or those to whom they were so very dear, imagine that, as they then gazed upon each other, each bore in lineaments so beautiful the symptoms of the respective maladies that were to lay them low.

“I wish, Jane, you would try and get up your spirits, love, and see and be entertaining to poor Charles, as this is the last day he is to be with you.”

She looked quickly at her mother, “The I last, mamma?”

“I mean for a while, dear, until after his I return from the Continent.”

She seemed relieved by this.  “Oh no, not the last, Charles,” she said—­“Yet I know not how it is—­I know not; but sometimes, indeed, I think it is—­and if it were, if it were—­”

A paleness more deadly spread over her face; and with a gaze of mute and undying-devotion she clasped her hands, and repeated—­“if it should be the last—­the last!”

“I did not think you were so foolish or so weak a girl, Jane,” said William, “as to be so cast down, merely because Charles is taking a skip to the Continent to get a mouthful of fresh air, and back again.  Why, I know them that go to the Continent four times a year to transact business a young fellow, by the way, that has been paying his addresses to a lady for the last six or seven years.  I wish you saw them part, as I did—­merely a hearty shake of the hand—­’good by, Molly, take care of yourself till I see you again;’ and ’farewell, Simon, don’t forget the shawl;’ and the whole thing’s over, and no more about it.”

There was evidently something in these words that jarred upon a spirit of such natural tenderness as Jane’s.  While William was repeating them, her features expressed a feeling as if of much inward pain; and when he had concluded, she rose up, and seizing both his hands, said, in a tone of meek and earnest supplication: 

“Oh!  William dear, do not, do not—­it is not consolation—­it is distress.”