When Eugene returned from Liverpool, as Lucy had counseled him, he wrote to Kate a frank and manly letter, which ended with these words, “You have my life in your hands—to make it glad or miserable. I love you, and can be happy only if you return my love. May I come to you, and will you welcome me? Oh remember, I pray you, how much depends on your reply, and be merciful!” And the speedy answer was, only, “I do not love—I cannot receive you.” With a smile of triumph this was written, reader; and though a more thoroughly false declaration never issued from the _will_ of a proud woman, still, when it was penned and sent, the more Kitty felt her respect and power of self-endurance rising rapidly; life seemed to her then, as, after all, a pleasant burden, easy to be borne. Yes, she could live—live happily, too, alone with her dear old sire, free in heart and in fancy, fetterless as the winds—for the shadow of a shade of control Mr. Clover never thought of exercising over her. But was she _really_ happy? Why, then, was she so tearful, so shy of cherishing old memories? And if she was _not_ fearful, how happened it that she so carefully piled away her old music, every song, every tune she had used in the by-gone? Why did she hide from sight, in the high, remote shelves of the library, all those books from which Eugene once read to her and Lucy Freer? Why was the school-room, that pleasant chamber, so studiously shunned? _Why was it_, dear, wise reader? During all the summer days the daughter spent much time in company with her sire; and to please her, the old man began to be quite literary in his tastes; and with chess, and books, and gardening, the time went swiftly on to both. But a change had come over Kitty—and Mr. Clover had eyes to perceive it; but he rather rejoiced in it, and became more proud of her than ever. She was a child no longer—nor a lively, joyous girl, but a quiet, thoughtful woman, becoming every day more beautiful, more studious, and womanly. The idea of going into the gay world had once made her almost wild with joy, but now the proposal which the father made, that they should pass the ensuing season in the metropolis with his relatives, was received with simple quiescence, and the preparations for a long sojourn from home made calmly and soberly. The brain of the lovely heiress teemed with no brilliant anticipations of conquest; and love and show—what could it mean? The sickness which, for the first time in her life, prostrated Kitty, the very week previous to the intended departure, was not therefore attributable to great excitement, or to any like cause. It was a slow, nervous fever, which, by degrees, wasted her strength away, and left her an infant in helplessness on her bed. The course of the disease could not be checked; it brought her to the very door of death, and there the angel stood, ready to break the slender thread of life, yet the destroying work, as if in mercy to the father, was delayed.