It is with the weight of this falsehood upon her soul that Lavinia returns to her charge. It does not sit very heavily, and is probably not a falsehood at all, since all the inquiries in question have, no doubt, been addressed to Nurse Blandy or Mrs. Prince, before her own appearance on the scene. And whether because a little of the former awkwardness makes him glad of a topic ready to his hand, or that his conscience smites him with an earlier negligence, he really does put the orthodox query this time. “Well, how is she?” Lavinia shakes her head. “Poor thing! I am afraid her overhaste to be well will very much retard her cure. You had better take warning by her!” There is a pretty admonishment in her voice, and in the face, which is gentled beyond its never ungentle wont by a diminution of colour. He rolls his head about on the pillow. “Am I in such overhaste to be well? Or do I only pretend it?” “I do not think you are a very good hand at pretending,” she answers, with a flickering smile. * * * * * And now the day is done. Has some new Joshua issued a contrary command to that which the first one sent over the wrecked Syrian town, and bid the sun double his speed to the west? “Sleep well,” Lavinia says. At his request, and by the condescension of Nurse Blandy, she has gone in to bid him good night at her own bedtime, and long after her services have been dispensed with. The electric light is out, and the moonlight, for whose continued admission during another few minutes he has begged, sleeps in faintly glorious bars and islands on the bed. Long and ghostly he lies there, and ghostly she leans over him. The pallid interrupted light--so interrupted that in a second either of them can withdraw from it under the shield of darkness--gives them a confidence and expansiveness unknown throughout the day. They feel something of the freedom of two innocently tender spirits freed from the shams and prohibitions of the flesh. “Sleep well!” She is stooping over him to enable her to see him, and one hand lies on the turned-over sheet. It looks so unearthly that he must think there is no contravention of rules made for the material and the real in carrying it to his ghostly lips. But the unspiritual contact, novel and most sweet, effectually breaks through the etherial figment. “Do not wish me ‘sleep:’ wish me a blessed lying dream!” * * * * *