Conway covered his face with his hand, to conceal the emotion that stirred him, and heard no more. Nor was he conscious that, one by one, the persons around him slipped noiselessly from the room, while into the seat beside his bed glided a young girl's figure, dressed in deep black, and veiled. “Such a fate!” muttered he, half aloud. “All this, that they call my good fortune, comes exactly when I do not care for it.” “And why so?” asked a low, soft voice, almost in his very ear. “Is this, indeed, you?” cried he, eagerly. “Was it _your_ hand I felt on my temples as I lay wounded outside the trenches? Was it your voice that cheered me as they carried me to the rear?” She slightly bent her head in assent, and murmured, “Your old comrade's sister could not do less.” “And now you are about to leave me,” said he, with an overwhelming sorrow in the tone. She turned away her head slightly, and made no answer. “I, who am utterly alone here,” said he, in a broken voice. “Is this, too, like my old comrade's sister?” There was a peevishness in the way he spoke this of which he seemed himself to be ashamed the moment the words were uttered; and he quickly added, “What a fellow I am to say this to you!--you, who have done so much for me,--you, who promised to be a daughter to my poor mother when I am gone!” “But you are not to take this gloomy view,” said she, hastily; “the surgeons all pronounce you better; they agree that your wounds progress favorably, and that, in a week or two, you may be removed to Constantinople, and thence to England.” He gave a faint, sickly smile of most melancholy meaning. “And what will not the cheery, bracing air of those Welsh mountains do, aided by the kind care of that best of nurses, a fond mother?” “And where will you be by that time?” asked he, eagerly. “Journeying away eastward to some far-away land, still more friendless!” said she, sadly. “This, then, is the sum of all my good fortune, that when life opens fairly for me, it shall be bereft of all that I care for!” cried he, wildly. Terrified by the excited tone in which he spoke, as well as by the feverish lustre of his eyes, Sybella tried to calm and soothe him, but he listened--if, indeed, he heard her--with utter apathy. “Come!” cried he, at last, “if your resolve be taken, so is mine. If you leave for India, I shall never quit the Crimea.” “It is not thus I expected one to speak who loves his mother as you do,” said she, reproachfully. “Ah, Sybella, it would indeed have been a happy day for me when I should have returned to her in honor, could I but have said, 'You have not alone a son beneath your roof, but a dear daughter also.' If all that they call my great luck had brought this fortune, then had I been indeed a fellow to be envied. Without that hope there is not another that I want to cling to.” She tried gently to withdraw her hand from his, but he held it in his grasp, and continued,--