and glowing manhood were unchanged; and when she knew him as he was, the revelation of his high nature simply confirmed her impression of his physical perfections.  She had done him a wrong; at her death news would come to him, and it might be that he would bless her name.  Because she sighed no longer for those dear lips and strong arms to close about her tremulous frame, it seemed to her that she had quite surrendered him.  Generous to Evan, she would be just to Rose.  Beneath her pillow she found pencil and paper, and with difficulty, scarce seeing her letters in the brown light, she began to trace lines of farewell to Rose.  Her conscience dictated to her thus, ’Tell Rose that she was too ready to accept his guilt; and that in this as in all things, she acted with the precipitation of her character.  Tell her that you always trusted, and that now you know him innocent.  Give her the proofs you have.  Show that he did it to shield his intriguing sister.  Tell her that you write this only to make her just to him.  End with a prayer that Rose may be happy.’

Ere Juliana had finished one sentence, she resigned the pencil.  Was it not much, even at the gates of death, to be the instrument to send Rose into his arms?  The picture swayed before her, helping her weakness.  She found herself dreaming that he had kissed her once.  Dorothy, she remembered, had danced up to her one day, to relate what the maids of the house said of the gentleman—­(at whom, it is known, they look with the licence of cats toward kings); and Dorothy’s fresh careless mouth had told how one observant maid, amorously minded, proclaimed of Evan, to a companion of her sex, that, ’he was the only gentleman who gave you an idea of how he would look when he was kissing you.’  Juliana cherished that vision likewise.  Young ladies are not supposed to do so, if menial maids are; but Juliana did cherish it, and it possessed her fancy.  Bear in your recollection that she was not a healthy person.  Diseased little heroines may be made attractive, and are now popular; but strip off the cleverly woven robe which is fashioned to cover them, and you will find them in certain matters bearing a resemblance to menial maids.

While the thoughts of his kiss lasted, she could do nothing; but lay with her two hands out on the bed, and her eyelids closed.  Then waking, she took the pencil again.  It would not move:  her bloodless fingers fell from it.

’If they do not meet, and he never marries, I may claim him in the next world,’ she mused.

But conscience continued uneasy.  She turned her wrist and trailed a letter from beneath the pillow.  It was from Mrs. Shorne.  Juliana knew the contents.  She raised it unopened as high as her faltering hands permitted, and read like one whose shut eyes read syllables of fire on the darkness.

’Rose has at last definitely engaged herself to Ferdinand, you will be glad to hear, and we may now treat her as a woman.’