"I did not hear him say much. He asked me where my head was struck when I fell, but I could not tell him--I did not know at the time, you remember. He and Mr.----" Henry's voice faltered. A sudden, almost imperceptible, movement of the head nearer the window, and a wild accession of colour to his feverish cheek, betrayed to Mr. St. John that something was passing which bore for him a deep interest. He raised his own head and caught a sufficient glimpse: _Georgina Beauclerc_. It told Mr. St. John all: though he had not needed to be told; and Miss Beauclerc's mysterious words, and Henry's past conduct became clear to him. So! the boy's heart had been thus early awakened--and crushed. "The heart that is soonest awake to the flowers Is always the first to be touched by the thorns," whistled Mr. St. John to himself. Ay, crushing is as sure to follow that _early_ awaking, as that thorns grow on certain rose-trees. But Mr. St. John said nothing more that day. On the following day, upon going in, he found Henry in bed. "Like a sensible man as you are," quoth Mr. St. John, by way of salutation. "Now don't rise from it again until you are better." Henry looked at him, an expression in his eyes that Mr. St. John did not like, and did not understand. "Did they tell you anything downstairs, Mr. St. John?" he inquired. "I did not see anyone but the servant. I came straight up." "Mamma is lying down, I dare say; she has been sitting with me part of the night. Then I will tell it you. I shall not be here many days," he whispered, putting his hand within Mr. St. John's. Mr. St. John did not take the meaning: that the case would have a fatal termination had not yet crossed his mind. "Where shall you be?" cried he, gaily, "up in the moon?" Henry sighed. "Up somewhere. I am going to die." "Going to what?" was the angry response. "I am dying, Mr. St. John." Mr. St. John's pulses stood still. "Who has been putting that rubbish in your head?" cried he, when he recovered them sufficiently to speak. "The doctors told my father yesterday evening, that as I went on, like this, from bad to worse, without their being able to discover the true nature of the case, they saw that it must terminate fatally. He knew that they had feared it before. Afterwards mamma came and broke it to me." "Why did she do so?" involuntarily uttered Mr. St. John, in an accent of reproach. "Though their opinion may be unfavourable--which I don't believe, mind--they had no right to frighten you with it." "It does not frighten me. Just at first I shrank from the news, but I am quite reconciled to it now. A faint idea that this might be the ending, has been running through my own mind for some days past, though I would not dwell on it sufficiently to give it a form." "I am _astonished_ that Mrs. Arkell should have imparted it to you!" emphatically repeated Mr. St. John. "What could she have been thinking of?"