“Exceedingly beautiful,” said Miss Copley. “She has been living with Lady Severn for some time, for she has no home of her own. Every one has been surprised at the marriage not being announced sooner, Mrs. Hutton said. She had only just heard of it in some round-about way, and she was quite full of it.” Then they talked about other things, and did not observe Marion’s increased silence, which lasted till they said goodbye to her at the door of the Cross House. A few days previously, when she had said to Geoffrey decisively that “all that sort of thing” was done with for her, “altogether and entirely,” she had meant what she said and believed her own assertion. Now, when she hurried upstairs to her own bedroom in the dingy Mallingford House, and sat down on the hard floor in her muddy riding-habit, with but one wish in her mind—to be alone, out of the reach of curious, unsympathetic eyes—Now, I say, when at last she felt free to think over, to realize what she had heard, she knew that it was not true what she had said. Far from being “done with for her,” on the secret, unacknowledged hope that for her a happy day was yet to dawn when all the mystery would be explained, all the suffering more than compensated for by the blessedness of the present—on this hope she had in truth been living, through all these weary months. And now that it was rudely thus snatched away, that all was indeed for ever, over, what was there left for her to do, poor weary, heartbroken wanderer in a very strange and desolate land—but to lie down and die? * * * * * * CHAPTER XI. VERONICA’S COUNSEL. “But all did leaven the air With a less bitter leaven of sure despair, Than these words—‘I loved once.’” MRS. BROWNING. SHE did not die, however. Young lives do not end so easily, and young hearts do not so quickly break as their inexperienced owners would imagine. She was very, very ill. For many weeks she lay in a state hardly to be described as either life or death, so faint was the line between the two, so many times we thought we had lost sight of her altogether in the shadows of the strange land that is ever go near us while yet a very far way off. It was at this time I first knew her, who ever after was very dear to me. It happened accidentally. I was visiting some friends at Mallingford just then, and happened to be calling at the Cross House the day the poor child was taken ill—the very day after the ride to Brackley that I have described—and I naturally did what I could in the way of nursing, as no nearer friend appeared to be at hand. Miss Tremlett was at first frightened, then cross; in which state she continued during the whole of Marion’s illness. Low fever, the doctors called it, but that is a vague and convenient name for an illness somewhat difficult to define.