“If what you told me just now is an untruth, I forbid you to undeceive me ever! You hear? My life is locked up in yours from henceforth; and if the day should come,” she added, more faintly still, “that we ought to part, why, then Heaven will be merciful, perhaps, and let us both die instead.” And then she writhed, white and shivering, out of his arms. “Oh! Lawrence, I am afraid!” “Afraid of what, my love?” he asked tenderly, enfolding her once more, and kissing her lips with all a lover’s fire. “I am afraid we shall not be allowed to be happy together long; something will part us.” “Only death, now, my dearest,” he answered back firmly. “Only death!” CHAPTER XVII. WHAT HOPE CAN DO. “Don’t talk to me of tonics!” said Colonel Dacre, a week after his engagement to Lady Gwendolyn. “I don’t believe in them at all. There is a sovereign remedy for ‘all the ills that flesh is heir to’; but it does not come within the doctors’ province, although they take the credit of its cures.” “What is that?” inquired Lady Gwendolyn, smiling. “Hope! When I roused from my long stupor that night, and looked straight into your dear eyes, the love and pity there gave me courage to live. Without that I should have fast drifted back into the shadow again, and not tried to struggle against my terrible weakness. But you forget, Gwen, that you have never told me how you heard of my illness.” “One of the chambermaids was my first informant. She said there was a gentleman ill in the hotel; and when I questioned her, she described you so accurately that I knew at once whom it must be.” “But where were you then?” “Here,” answered Lady Gwendolyn, laughing. “What! in the hotel? But I thought you wrote me that you had left.” “I did leave for a few hours--just long enough to get my hair dyed golden, and to put myself in deep mourning, when I returned as ‘Miss Mordaunt.’” “I wonder you weren’t recognized by the servants.” “None of them had seen me at all plainly. I was very anxious they should not, after my encounter with Mrs. O’Hara, as I did not know what she might say, and so I took my precautions. Besides, the golden hair does alter one a good deal.” “I knew you at once, Gwen.” “You looked into my eyes first.” “Wherever my first glance had fallen it would have been the same thing, Gwen. Indeed, if I had put out my hand in the darkness and touched you, some subtle sense would have told me who it was.” “‘By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes.’” quoted Lady Gwendolyn gaily. “I suppose that is the kind of warning you would have found at your fingers’ ends, Lawrence.” “I have done with warnings,” he answered more gravely. “They may be a help to you when you don’t want to do a thing; but when you do want they only make you wish for it more. The best way is to follow your inclinations, so long as they are sufficiently moral, and let the rest take care of itself.”