And so, Doctor Remy came and went, and unlimited opportunities were given him to talk to Carice,--of Bergan, or of anything else,--of which he failed not to make artful use, with reference both to the present and the future. In due time, she came to look upon him somewhat as Astra had once done,--as a man more wise and calm than tender, more just than genial, but a man to be greatly esteemed and trusted, nevertheless; and, certainly a true, if not an enthusiastic, friend of Bergan. Yet she never thought of him, strange to say, as a friend to herself. Her instincts were far too fine and clear for that. If ever, for a moment, she felt inclined to turn to him for sympathy, she immediately shrank back from him, as powerless to give her what she sought. It was precisely the same feeling--though she did not recognize it as such--with which she would have turned away from an image in a mirror, which, during a single illusive moment of twilight, she had mistaken for a living form. And the days came and went, and another month drew nigh its close. X. A WICKED DEVICE. Carice was strolling languidly along the bank of the creek, the heaviness of her heart easily discoverable in her absent face and languid step. Her eyes rested on the same stream, her ears were filled with the murmur of the same leaves, which had witnessed her parting with Bergan, nearly two months before, yet neither made any distinct impression on her mind; she saw and heard but the flow and murmur of her own troubled thoughts. She had noticed a singular change of tone in Doctor Remy, of late, with respect to Bergan. He no longer made the young man the subject of free and frank conversation; if obliged to mention him at all, he did it with a certain reserve and caution, an air of picking and choosing his phrases, which at first puzzled, and was now beginning to alarm, the poor girl, already worn and nervous with the long sickness of hope deferred.