for several weeks before coming to Stammars, without, to all appearance, advancing one single step towards the end she had in view. But she flattered herself that her failure at that time was altogether due to the fact that her cousin had not as yet, whatever he might say to the contrary, given up all expectation of one day inducing Miss Lloyd to change her mind in his favour. In any case, his recent disappointment sat too freshly upon him: his hurt was not yet healed, the image of Miss Lloyd was still too constantly in his mind's eye, for any real hope to exist that he might have his eyes and his thoughts diverted elsewhere. But that time was now gone by. Mr. Kelvin was no love-sick schoolboy, to go whimpering through the world because he could not have the particular toy on which he had set his mind. When once the first sharp pang was over, when once he knew for a fact that the heart he had one day hoped to call his was irrevocably given to another, pride would come to the aid of his natural strength of character, and he would school himself to forget, would school himself to obliterate from his memory all traces of so painful an episode. Then, if ever, would come Olive's chance; then, if ever, would come the opportunity so intensely longed for. But, in order to avail herself of that opportunity, in order to put it to all the uses of which it was capable, it was imperatively necessary that she should be there--on the spot. Thus, to-night, the problem which Olive Deane had set herself to solve--the problem which kept her out of bed half the night and awake the remaining half, was, "How, and by what means, is it possible for me to make myself an inmate of my cousin's house, so that he may have an opportunity of learning to love me?" Just as the first ghostly glimmer of daylight was beginning to creep across the sky, she sat up in bed, moved by a thought against which she had been fighting faintly all night long, but which had conquered her at last. "If only he were ill!" was the thought that at last clothed itself with definite words in her mind. "If only he were ill!" she said aloud, staring out with blank, sleepless eyes at the dawn. "Aye--if! Then I could claim to nurse him; then I could obtain a place by his side. He has no sister, his mother is old and infirm, and no one else is so near to him as I am. And why should he not be ill?" She went down to breakfast with dark-rimmed eyes and sallow cheeks, and looking as if she had aged five years in a few short hours. Still the same question kept repeating itself like a refrain in her mind, "Why should he not be ill?" Over and over again, as though it were a question asked by some other than herself, it seemed to be whispered in her ear; and even when she was hearing her pupils their lessons, it seemed to write itself in blood-red letters across the book in her hand.