"DEAR DOCTOR BRUNTON: Bell is much worse to-day. Could you make it convenient to see her at five o'clock, when I shall be at the lodge? I am glad I can write so that you will at least be able to read this. "I am yours sincerely, "LOUISA MOOR." He read this, and read it again, and yet again: it was frank, friendly and familiar. Did it mean merely what the words stood for, or was it possible--was it in the least degree possible--that she really cared for him? It might mean everything or it might mean nothing. "But I shall see when we meet," he thought as he laid it down. He was at the lodge before five, and found the peasant-girl with the amber beads there before him. He merely bowed to her, and went direct to his patient, whom he examined closely: then he turned round and said somewhat sharply, "She is not worse than when I saw her last." "She appeared to me to be much worse," said the rustic maiden, coloring ever so little. "That may be," said the doctor, going to the window out of hearing of the old woman. "Do you know," he said to the girl standing before him in her short-gown and amber beads--"do you know that my visits here are of no real use? I can do nothing. I can't fight with death, which is certain to be the end before long. I shall make my visits very much more seldom than I have done." "Will you?" she said softly. "Yes, I will." "No you won't," she said pleadingly--"not if I wish you to come." "Do you wish me to come?" "Certainly I wish it." "Then you distinctly understand that I come on your account?" "Yes. Bell was an old favorite of mamma's, and I should like to see her well attended to." The doctor looked into the beautiful eyes to help him to make up his mind: they fell gently and graciously under his gaze, and he said, "I'll see her every day," meaning his patient. Which he did--not quite every day, but very near it. Lady Louisa flitted in and out of the lodge, sometimes in her own character, or as the peasant-girl, or in any other role she chose to assume: it was an amusement she was fond of. Dr. Brunton lived in a fever. If she was not at the lodge when he called, he felt his day was lost; if she was, it was almost worse: he felt he himself was lost. Where was it to end? If she married him, what chance of happiness was there for her, or even for him? and if she did not--But he would not allow himself to think of that. Cloth of gold had matched with cloth of frieze before now, and the union had been blessed. Why not in this case? If Lady Louisa thought the world well lost for love, who had a right to interfere? Not that the doctor was a vain man--he was the reverse--but he held that human beings were men and women before they were earls and countesses, and that the lesser rank should give place to the greater. The insignificant dwelling at the corner of the wood became the centre of his world, the place round which his thoughts revolved, whether he would or no.