"You will soon be able to put him at defiance. But, indeed, you are so weak now you could not attempt too much." "Oh, that's nonsense! I don't believe anything about it. You shall stay here with me; if I have to be kept prisoner I will hold you fast, too." "There is no fear of my attempting to leave the room," he replied. Elsie felt much improved. She sat up in bed, made her brother play at various games of cards with her, talked and looked herself again. But into the conversation, in which Mellen did his best to hold a share, there crept some chance mention of that name which those walls must no longer hear. It fell from Elsie's lips thoughtlessly, and at once dispelled her faint attempt at cheerfulness, throwing her into the gloom which she had succeeded in shutting out for a little time. "Did you write that letter, Grant?" she asked, quickly. "Yes; I sent it down to the village, to go by the morning's mail." "Thank you, Grant, thank you!" She attempted to console herself with thinking she had done something in Elizabeth's behalf, but when her conscience compared it with all that she ought to have done, her coward heart shrank back at the contrast. "I am tired of cards," she said, sweeping the bits of pasteboard off the bed with one of her abrupt movements, which would have been rude in another, but seemed graceful and childish in her. "Cards are stupid things at the best!" Mellen patiently collected the scattered pack and laid it away, trying to think of some other means of relieving her _ennui_. "Shall I read to you?" he asked. "I don't believe I could listen," she said, tossing her head wearily about. "I don't know--just try." There was a pile of new novels and magazines on the table in the centre of the room, for Elsie always kept herself liberally supplied with these sources of distraction, though it must be confessed that she generally carried the recreation to an extreme, reading her romance to the exclusion of more solid studies, just as she preferred nibbling bon-bons, to eating substantial food. "There certainly is opportunity for a choice," Mellen said, glancing at the pile. "What book will you choose?" "Oh, bring a magazine; read me some short story." Mellen seated himself, opened the periodical and commenced reading the first tale he lighted upon. It was a story by a popular author, beginning in a light, pleasant way, and promising the amusement his listener needed. But as the little romance went on it deepened into a pathetic tragedy. It was an account of a noble-born Sicilian woman who, during the Revolution, endured, silently, every species of suffering, at last death itself, rather than betray her husband to his enemies, yet the husband had bitterly wronged her and half-broken her heart during their married life.