"I don't know, Rachel," he replied sadly. "Perhaps all the rest of my life. I have done my best to live here; but I can't. It's no use: I can't bear it. I have sold the place." Rachel's lips parted, but she did not speak; her face flushed scarlet, then turned white; and, without a moment's warning or possibility of staying the tears, she buried her face in her hands, and wept convulsively. In the same instant, a magnetic sense of all that this grief meant thrilled through Doctor Eben's every nerve. No such thought had ever crossed his mind before. Rachel had never been to him any thing but the "child" he had first called her. Very reverently seeking now to shield her womanhood from any after pain of fear, lest she might have betrayed her secret, he said: "Why, my child! you must not feel so badly about it. I ought not to have spoken so. Of course, you must know that my life has been a very lonely one, and always must be. But I should not give up and go away, simply for that. I am not well, and I am quite sure that I need several years of a milder climate. I dare say I shall be home-sick, and come back after all." Rachel lifted her eyes and looked steadily in his. Her tears stopped. The old clairvoyant gaze, which he had not seen on her face for many years, returned. "No. You will never come back," she said slowly. Then, as one speaking in a dream, she said still more slowly, and uttering each word with difficulty and emphasis: "I--do--not--believe--your--wife--is--dead." Much shocked, and thinking that these words were merely the utterance of an hysterical excitement, Dr. Eben replied: "Not to me, dear child; she never will be: but you must not let yourself be excited in this way. You will be ill. I must be your doctor again and prescribe for you." Rachel continued to watch him, with the same bright and unflinching gaze. He turned from her, and, bringing her a glass of water in which he had put a few drops from a vial, said in his old tone: "Drink this, Rachel." She obeyed in silence; her eyes drooped; the tension of her whole figure relaxed; and, with a long sigh, she exclaimed: "Oh, forgive me!" "There is nothing to forgive, my child," said the doctor, much moved, and, longing to throw his arms around her as she sat there, so gentle, appealing, beautiful, loving. "Why can I not love her?" "What else is there better in life for me to do?" he thought, but his heart refused. Hetty, the lost dead Hetty, stood as much between him and all other women to-day, as she had stood ten years before. "I must go now, Rachel," he said. "Good-by."