“Don’t speak of such a thing,” said she, earnestly. “Pray excuse me, Mr. Wilson,” and she went straight out of the room. When she reached her chamber, she felt very sorrowful, and, truth to tell, very sick. She had been worn down by labor and watching during Mr. Evans’s illness, and her sadness in being estranged from him. She had got nervous, and began, for the first time in her life, to have the _blues_. She almost persuaded herself that she was become a burden to her cousin, and that she ought to marry Wilson. She wept till she had a dreadful headache, and when the servant came to call her to make Mr. Evans’s tea, she was really too ill to go down—and with swollen eyes, red face, and dabbled and disarranged curls, she looked into the glass, and dared not present herself before her cousin. “Tell Mr. Evans that I have a bad headache, and if he will excuse me, I will go early to bed. Make every thing very nice for him, Norah. Were his slippers warm when he came in?” “I don’t know, Miss, but I will get his supper good”—and she went to carry Fanny’s excuse to Mr. Evans. “Go back, Norah, quickly, and ask Miss Evans if I may come up.” Fanny had wheeled her sofa to the fire, and had just buried her face in a velvet cushion to weep as long and as much as she wished. Mr. Evans, in his concern for her, had followed Norah, and stood outside the door. “Tell him not to trouble himself to come up. I shall do very well as soon as I have slept.” “If you had asked me to take the trouble to stay down stairs, I might have thought of it; but seeing I am here, it is no trouble to come; and you are so bright and cosy, suppose you let the girl bring the waiter up here and make my tea for me.” Mr. Evans was quite sure that something beside sickness had happened to Fanny, and he intended to be confessor or doctor, as the case might be. “Norah, bring Mr. Evans’s supper to my room,” said Fanny, more cheerfully than she would have thought possible a few minutes before. And she passed into her bed-room and bathed her face and her eyes, and arranged her hair, and came back to make tea for Mr. Evans very much improved. But she could not talk—she had fairly lost her tongue. Mr. Evans seemed more unconstrained and more fully himself than since his unfortunate offer of himself to Fanny. “Fanny,” said he, after the tea things were taken away, “I would like to ask you what is the matter, if I thought you would like to tell me. It is no common headache that is tormenting you; I would sooner guess it is a heartache.” “And what if it is a heartache?” said Fanny.