Then two years glided away, when the widow, passing through many a phase of sorrow, sickness, and misery, sat hoping on that he whom she mourned would yet return, and all the while ignorant of the hand that supplied her wants, or of the good friend with so great a love for fancy-work that she sent order after order, liberally paid for by the hands of Septimus Hardon. The beauty of the past slowly faded, so that she became haggard and thin; a lasting illness seemed to have her in its grasp; but still faithful to his trust, true to the love he bore her, Septimus Hardon set at naught the frowns of his father and the sneers of his cousins, while he devoted himself to the alleviation of the widow's sufferings, and kept her from the additional stings of want, for she had been left totally unprovided for by her young and hopeful husband. And what was the result? Such as might have been expected from such a nature as Septimus Hardon's. Patient and true, the love he bore this woman was hidden for years, and then, when in her hopeless misery the widow turned her head upon the sick pillow and asked his advice, he told her to give him the right to protect her, to be to her child, little Lucy, a second father, and then shrank, crushed and trembling, from the room, affrighted at her look of horror, and the words accusatory which told him of faithlessness to his trust, to his schoolfellow, who she felt yet lived. But it was only in her hopeful heart he lived, and six months after forbidding Septimus her house, Mary Grey, weeping bitterly over the discovery she had made of the hand that had so long sustained her, wrote these words and sent them to the Grange: "Forgive me!" Volume One, Chapter II. SEP'S COMPLAINT. Octavius Hardon's book was at a standstill, and the world still in the thick darkness of ignorance as regarded political reform upon his basis, for Septimus Hardon was ill, sick almost unto death. He had slowly grown listless and dull, careless of everything, daily becoming weaker, until, apparently without ailment, he had taken to his bed, over which his uncle, Doctor Hardon; his assistant, Mr Reston, a handsome, cynical-looking man, and the rival practitioner of the town, had all concurred in shaking their heads and declaring that nothing could be done, since Septimus Hardon was suffering from the effects of an internal malformation. They were quite right; the poor fellow had too much heart; and though the wise of this earth declare that people do not die of or for love, yet most assuredly Septimus Hardon would slowly have faded from his place among men, and before many months had passed over his head gone where there is rest.