Colonel Fortescue obtained a few weeks' leave, that he might take his child to the sea-side as recommended, ere she joined her mother. And alone with him, gradually regaining a moderate degree of strength, Ellen was very happy; but such bright intervals were indeed few and far between. There was no change in her mother's conduct toward her, when reunited. Her heart had, indeed, risen to her lips as she again beheld the child so nearly lost; and had she followed impulse, she would have clasped her in her arms and wept over her, but that would have seemed tacitly to acknowledge that she had been wrong, and had suffered from it; and so she refrained, causing suffering to herself, anguish to her child, and pain to her husband, all from that fell demon, pride. She only chose to remember that it was Ellen who had been the cause of her husband's anger--Ellen, the constant subject of contention between them--Ellen, always causing the pang of self-reproach: and so how was it possible that she could love her? About a year after Ellen's dangerous illness, when she was nearly ten, and Edward just eleven, Colonel Fortescue was ordered to take command of some troops to be stationed at a fort, whose vicinity to some hostile natives rendered it rather a post of danger. The wives and children of the officers were permitted to accompany them, if they wished it, and, except in the colonel's own family, there had been no hesitation in their choice. The colonel was strangely and painfully depressed as with some vague dread, and all his affection for his wife had returned with such force as to make him shrink in unusual suffering from the idea of leaving her; and conquering reluctance, for he felt as if she would not accede, he implored her to accompany him, confessing he felt ill and unhappy, and shrank from a separation. His wife looked at him with astonishment; he had never asked nor thought of such a thing before, she said, in their many brief partings, and she really could not understand him. The place was decidedly unhealthy, and Edward must not be exposed to its malaria; besides which, she had promised him to go to a juvenile ball, which was given by an English family of rank, in a fortnight's time, and she could not possibly disappoint him; and why her husband should wish for her in such a place she could not imagine, but she knew she should die of terror before she had been there a week. Not a word did the colonel utter in reply, but he felt as if an ice-bolt had struck his heart and frozen it at once. He fixed his eyes upon her, with a strange, sad, reproaching look, which haunted her till her death, and turning from her, sought the room where Ellen was preparing her lessons for the joyful hour when he could attend to her. As she sprung toward him with a cry of glee, he clasped her to his bosom, without the power of uttering a sound, save a groan so deep and hollow, that the child's unusual glee was checked, and she clung to him in terror; and when he