I now never went near Cornelius unless when sent by Kate. At first I had hoped he would miss me, but sufficient companionship to him was the charmed presence which haunts the lover's solitude; he asked not why I staid away, and pride forbade me to return. Passion had seized on him, and she absorbed all his faculties save one: he remained faithful to Art. He was a most enamoured lover, but not even for his mistress did he leave his easel, or lose an hour of daylight. She did not put him to a test, of which it was plain that, of his own accord, he would never dream. Every moment he could spare he gave to her; evening after evening he handed over my lessons to Kate, and left us to go next- door: he was still kind, but somehow or other the charm had departed from his kindness. Several weeks had thus elapsed, when Miriam was suddenly summoned to the sick bed of an aged relative, who dwelt in a retired village twenty miles away. Cornelius seemed to feel this first separation very much. He sighed deeply when the hour struck that usually led him to his beloved, opened his cigar-case, and smoked what, if he had used a pipe, might have been termed the calumet of sorrow. But he was not one of those inveterate smokers who, from the clouds they raise around them, can look down on the tribulations of this world with Olympic serenity. When his cigar was out, he brought forth no other, and half sat on the sofa with a most _ennuy?_ aspect. Kate had gone up to her room, complaining of a bad headache. I sat reading by her vacant chair, in that place which had become the type of my altered destiny. "Daisy!" all at once said Cornelius. I looked up. "Come here," he continued. I rose and obeyed, and, standing before him, waited to hear what he had to say to me. He said nothing, but stretched out his arm and drew me on his knee, smiling as he met my startled look, and felt my heart beating against the arm that encircled me. "Are you afraid?" he asked. "Oh no, Cornelius," I replied, but I felt astonished and happy at this unexpected return of kindness; so happy that, ashamed of it, I hid my face on his shoulder. He laughed because I would not look up, kissed my averted cheek, and finally compelled my burning face and overflowing eyes to meet his gaze. "How perverse you have been!" he said, chidingly; "I don't know what tempted me to take any notice of you again; I am too fond of you, you jealous, sulky little creature."