"Down--until it is just one great big ache clouding out the whole world? Yes, I know!" said Bridgie quietly. "I have never had a bad illness, but my trouble came to me in a different way, Sylvia, and my time of suspense was not days, but weeks and months, I might almost say years, except that even my hopes died out before that time arrived!" The two girls looked at each other intently, and the blank depression on the invalid's face gave place to one of anxious sympathy. "You mean, of course, that it was a mental trouble. Could you tell me about it, Bridgie, do you think? I don't want to force your confidence, but I am so interested in you, and it would do me good to be sorry for someone beside myself. Was it a--love affair?" "I cared for him, but I am afraid he could not have liked me very much," said Bridgie sadly. "I have never spoken of him except to Esmeralda and one other person, but I don't mind telling you, dear, if it will be the least bit of help to you now. We seem to know each other so well that it seems absurd to think we had not met, two months ago. "It was just someone I met one time when I was visiting, and when he was ordered abroad he asked if he might write while he was away. I was very happy about it, for I had never seen anyone I liked so much, and we wrote to each other regularly for over a year. They were not love- letters; just quite ordinary, sensible, telling-the-news, but there was always one little sentence in his which seemed to say more than the words, and to tell me that he cared a great deal. If a stranger had read it, he would not have understood, but I knew what he meant, and I used to skim over the pages until I came to those few words, and they were the whole letter to me. "Looking back now I can see how I lived in expectation of mail day, but suddenly his letters stopped. When father was pronounced hopelessly ill, I sent him a hurried note, saying that we should have to leave the Castle, for all the money was gone, and from that day to this I have heard no more. It was very hard coming just then, Sylvia! "For the first few months I was not really uneasy, though very disappointed. I knew that a soldier's life is not always his own, and that he might have been ordered to a part of the country where it was impossible to send off letters, but then I read his name as taking part in some function in Bombay, and I knew that could be the case no longer. I would not tell Esmeralda to depress her in the midst of her happiness, so I just sat tight and waited, and the time was very long.