'Dear Maud,' he said, 'I should be wretched, the most miserable wretch alive, if ever any shade of doubt or coldness came between us two. You hold my life, dear, in your hand: my heart is wholly yours and has no other life. If ever your love to me waned it would be death to me.' And Maud, as she looked and listened, knew that it would. 'It can never wane, dear Jem,' she said, infected with her husband's mood and clinging to him, as was her wont, like a child that needs protection. 'Every day you bind me closer to you; only I fear--and ten times more after being such a goose as I was just now--that I am not half worthy of all you are to me.' CHAPTER XXXI. BOLDERO ON GUARD. Oh! never work Like this was done for work's ignoble sake: It must have finer aims to spur it on! Thus Maud and her husband were more than reconciled. Maud packed up her dresses, with a few natural sighs that so much sweetness should waste itself unseen, and set about passing the summer with heroical cheerfulness. Things took a turn for the better. A few thunder-storms had come to cool the world, and the early rains were covering the barren mountains with verdure and bringing new life to Maud's garden. Mrs. Crummins was giving her lessons in water-colours, and altogether existence was less intolerable than she had believed it possible that it should be. Perhaps the momentary breach, followed so quickly by so thorough a reconciliation, had engendered an especial sweetness in her intercourse with her husband. Be that as it may, Maud had resigned Elysium and settled down courageously to her home life, not, perhaps, without regret, but at any rate, without discontent. Before, however, their reconciliation had time to take effect in any alteration of their plans, events occurred which gave their thoughts a wholly new direction and effectually settled for them what they were to do. Occasional cases of cholera, seeds sown by the scattered atoms of the great Fair the year before, had been occurring in various districts all through the winter, and at the first blush of spring the disease showed symptoms of breaking out in force. Week by week the 'Gazette' chronicled a marked diminution in other forms of sickness, an equally distinct increase in this. The doctors had a busy time in making preparations, and great were the cleansings, the whitewashings, the emptyings, the fillings-up in many an immund old town and ill-odoured village, where the kingdom of Dirt had prevailed in unbroken tranquillity for generations past.