To every one but Doctor Remy, Carice was gentleness itself. She was happiness, too, in a touchingly quiet, dreamy, illogical form. She was content to spend hours at the window, watching for the first glimpse of Bergan, with a smile on her lips, and her eyes bright with eager expectation; and though she sometimes sighed, when the day ended, and he did not come, she was ready to begin the same hopeful watch on the morrow, and never seemed to know how long it had lasted. As she grew stronger, she resumed, in some measure, her old pursuits;--she busied herself with light household tasks; she wrought dainty embroidery with silks and worsteds; she read, chiefly poetry, the music of which seemed to please her ear, without fatiguing her mind; she even noticed the cloud on her father's brow, and made gentle war upon it,--conquering, of course, as long as he was in her sight, and never suspecting how heavily it settled back afterward. But all this time, the veil over the past never lifted, nor was the eager watch for Bergan ever abandoned. The few intimate friends, or the servants not of the household, who saw her occasionally, noticed nothing unusual about her, except the delicacy and languor consequent upon a severe illness; Mrs. Bergan being always present to turn the conversation away from every dangerous point, and guide it through safe channels. To the rest of the world, it was simply known that Carice had suddenly been stricken down, on her wedding night, by a fever, supposed to be of the same nature as the one which had lately prostrated her father; and that she was not yet sufficiently strong to show herself abroad, or see much company at home. Doctor Remy, meanwhile, came and went, and spent as much time at the cottage as could reasonably be expected of a physician with a large area of practice, and an office three miles away from his nominal home. Not a person, outside of the limited household, supposed that he never saw Carice, except when she was fast asleep, and totally unconscious of his presence.