_"In the unruffled shelter of thy love, My bark leaped homeward from a stormy sea, And furled its sails, and, like a nested dove--"_ "Mother!" called out Arthur's feeble, fretful voice, and in a minute the poetry had all gone out of her head, and she was by her boy's side, feeding him, jesting with him, and planning how the first day of his convalescence should be celebrated by a grand festival, inviting the two others to tea in his room. It was her own room, from which he had never been moved since the first night. How familiar had grown the crimson sofa, the tall mirror, the carved oaken wardrobe! The bride had regarded these splendors with a wondering half-uneasy gratitude; but now, to Arthur's nurse and "mother," they looked pleasant, home-like, and dear. "We will pull the sofa to the fire. Help, papa, please, and place the little table before it. And we will send written invitations which papa shall deliver, with a postman's knock, at the nursery door. We won't send him one, I think?" "Very well," said Dr. Grey, with a great pretense of wrath; "then papa will have to invite himself, like the wicked old fairy at the christening of--Who was it, Arthur?" Arthur clapped his hands, which proceeding was instantly stopped by Christian. "It was the Sleeping Beauty, which you don't know one bit about, and I do, and ever so many more tales. She used to tell me them in the middle of the night, when I couldn't sleep, and they were so nice and so funny! She shall tell you some after tea. And we'll make her sing too. Papa, did you ever hear her sing?" "No," said Dr. Grey. "Oh, but I have. She'll sing for me," returned Arthur, proudly. "She said she would, though she had meant never to sing again." Christian blushed violently, for the boy, in his unconscious way, had referred to a little episode of his illness, when, having exhausted all efforts to soothe him into drowsiness, she had tried her voice, silent for many months--silent since before she had known Dr. Grey. She had wished it so--wished to bury all relics of that time of her youth deep down, so that no chance hand could ever dig them up again. "Do you really sing?" asked Dr. Grey, a little surprised, and turning full upon her those grave, gentle, tender eyes. She blushed more painfully than ever, but she answered steadily, "Yes, I was supposed to have a very fine voice. My father wished it cultivated for the stage. It might have been so if things had been different." "Would you have liked it?--the stage, I mean." "Oh no, no!" with a visible, unmistakable shudder. "I would have resisted to the last. I hated it." "Was that why you left off singing?" It would have been so easy to tell a lie--a little harmless white lie but Christian could not do it. She could keep silence to any extent, but falsehood was impossible to her. She dropped her eyes; but the color once more overspread her whole face as she answered, distinctly and decisively, "No."