“Hattie is spending the day with Lila Manning, who is just recovering from a severe attack of scarlet fever, and Felix is in the library trying to sleep.  He has one of his nervous headaches to-day.  Poor fellow! he tries so hard to overcome his irritable temper and to grow patient, that I am growing fonder of him every day.  How travel-spent and ghastly you are!  Sit down, and I will order some refreshments.  Take this wine, my dear, and presently you shall have a cup of chocolate.”

“Thank you, not any wine.  I only want to see Felix.”

She went to the library, cautiously opened the door, and crept softly across the floor to the end of the sofa.

The boy lay looking through the window, and up beyond the walls and chimneys, at the sapphire pavement, where rolled the sun.  Casual observers thought the cripple’s face ugly and disagreeable; but the tender, loving smile that lighted the countenance of the governess as she leaned forward, told that some charm lingered in the sharpened features overcast with sickly sallowness.  In his large, deep-set eyes, over which the heavy brows arched like a roof, she saw now a strange expression that frightened her.  Was it the awful shadow of the Three Singing Spinners, whom Catullus painted at the wedding of Peleus?  As the child looked into the blue sky, did he catch a glimpse of their trailing white robes, purple-edged—­of their floating rose-colored veils?  Above all, did he hear the unearthly chorus which they chanted as they spun?

“Currite ducentes, subteinina currite fusi!”

The governess was seized by a vague apprehension as she watched her pupil, and bending down, she said, fondly: 

“Felix, my darling, I have come back!  Never again while I live will I leave you.”

The almost bewildering joy that flashed into his countenance mutely but eloquently welcomed her, as kneeling beside the sofa she wound her arms around him, and drew his head to her shoulder.

“Edna, is Mr. Hammond dead?”

“No, he is almost well again, and needs me no more.”

“I need you more than anybody else ever did.  Oh, Edna!  I thought sometimes you would stay at the South that you love so well, and I should see you no more; and then all the light seemed to die out of the world, and the flowers were not sweet, and the stars were not bright, and oh!  I was glad I had not long to live.”

“Hush! you must not talk so.  How do you know that you may not live as long as Ahasuerus, the ‘Everlasting Jew’?  My dear little boy, in all this wide earth, you are the only one whom I have to love and cling to, and we will be happy together.  Darling, your head aches to-day?”

She pressed her lips twice to his hot forehead.

“Yes; but the heartache was much the hardest to bear until you came.  Mamma has been very good and kind, and staid at home and read to me; but I wanted you, Edna.  I do not believe I have been wicked since you left; for I prayed all the while that God would bring you back to me.  I have tried hard to be patient.”