In reply, Cornelia half smothered the invalid with caresses and kisses, and assurances of unchanging affection. “Oh, Nellie, Nellie! there was one who on the eve of the bitterest trial, said to his chosen friends, ‘All ye shall be offended because of me.’ And his chief friend said, ‘Although all should be offended yet will not I,’ and furthermore declared, ‘if I should die with thee, I will not deny thee in any wise.’ Oh! failing human strength! Oh! feeble human love! Nellie! you know how it ended. ‘They all forsook him and fled.’” “But I will be truer to my friend than Peter to his master,” replied Cornelia. Marguerite drew the girl’s face down closer to her own, gazed wistfully, not into but upon those brilliant, superficial brown eyes, that because they had no depth repelled her confidence, and then with a deep groan and a mournful shake of the head, she released Nellie, and turned her own face to the wall. Did she deem Miss Compton’s friendship less profound than pretentious? I do not know; but from that time Miss De Lancie maintained, upon one subject at least, a stern reserve. And when, at last, directly, though most kindly and respectfully, questioned as to the origin of her agitation and swoon in the ball-room, she declared it to have been a symptom of approaching illness, and discouraged further interrogation. Slowly Marguerite De Lancie regained her strength. It was the middle of March before she left her bed, and the first of April before she went out of the house. One day about this time, as the two friends were sitting together in Marguerite’s chamber, Cornelia said: “There is a circumstance that I think I ought to have told you before now, Marguerite. But we read of it only a few days after you were taken ill, and when you were not in a condition to be told of it.” “Well, what circumstance was that?” asked Miss De Lancie, indifferently. “It was a fatal accident that happened to one of our friends. No, now! don’t get alarmed--it was to no particular friend,” said Cornelia, interrupting herself upon seeing Marguerite’s very lips grow white. “Well! what was it?” questioned the latter. “Why, then, you must know that the _Venture_, in which Lord William Daw sailed, was wrecked off the coast of Cornwall, and Lord William and Mr. Murray were among the lost. We read the whole account of it, copied from an English paper into the Richmond _Standard_. Lord William’s body was washed ashore, the same night of the wreck.” “Poor young man, he deserved a better fate,” said Marguerite.