charmed yet abashed her mind, that he should be false to his fair exterior, and mean something unlovely and untrue, instead of a real devotion, that was too terrible to believe. Therefore, she did not altogether refuse to reply to Oswald’s inquiries when the next hospital day brought about another meeting. This time he did not even pretend that the meeting was accidental, that he had been too late for making the proper inquiries in his own person, but went up to her, eagerly asking for ‘our little patient,’ with all the openness of a recognised acquaintance. ‘Emmy is better--if you mean Emmy,’ said Agnes, with great state. ‘The fever is gone, and I hope she will soon be well.’ ‘Poor little Emmy,’ said Oswald; ‘but I don’t want her to be well too soon--that is, it would not do to hurry her recovery. She must want a great deal of care still.’ He hoped she would smile at this, or else take it literally and reply seriously; but Agnes did neither. She walked on, with a stately air, quickening her pace slightly, but not so as to look as if she were trying to escape. ‘I suppose, as the fever is gone, she has ceased to imagine herself in heaven,’ said Oswald. ‘Happy child! when sickness has such illusions, it is a pity to be well. We are not so well off in our commonplace life.’ He thought she would have responded to the temptation and turned upon him to ask what he meant by calling life commonplace; and indeed the wish stirred Agnes so that she had to quicken her pace in order to resist the bait thus offered. She said nothing, however, to Oswald’s great discomfiture, who felt that nothing was so bad as silence, and did not know how to overcome the blank, which had more effect on his lively temperament than any amount of disapproval and opposition. But he made another valorous effort before he would complain. ‘Yours, however, is not a commonplace life,’ he said. ‘We worldlings pay for our ease by the sense that we are living more or less ignobly, but it must be very different with you who are doing good always. Only, forgive me, is there not a want of a little pleasure, a little colour, a little brightness? The world is so beautiful,’ said Oswald, his voice slightly faltering, not so much from feeling, as from fear that he might be venturing on dubious ground. ‘And _we_ are so young.’