For why should not this be her task? Why was this strange woman to be always preferred to her? It should have been her office to read to the sick man, and she would gladly have undertaken the duty. "I am very sorry I came, papa, but I see you so seldom," she said softly. "Papa, dear, let me come and read to you." "No, no," cried Elthorne peevishly. "Nurse is going to read. Besides, you have company downstairs. Burwood has not gone?" "No, papa." "And you come away and leave him? There, go down again, and do, pray, help your aunt to keep up some of the old traditions of the place. What will Burwood think?" Isabel gave a kind of gasp, her forehead wrinkled up, and the tears rose to her eyes, but at that moment she saw those of the nurse fixed upon her inquiringly, and in an instant she flushed up and darted a look full of resentment at "this woman," who appeared to be gratifying a vulgar curiosity at her expense. "Did you hear me, Isabel?" cried her father, querulously. "Pray, go down. You fidget me. Go down to Burwood, and if he asks, tell him I am very much better, and that I shall be glad to see him soon." "Yes, papa," she said faintly; and turning back to the door, she had her hand upon it, when, moved by an affectionate impulse, she ran back quickly, bent down and kissed him. "Good girl!" he said. "Good girl! Now make haste down." She glanced quickly at the nurse, and the resentful flush once more suffused her cheeks, for those eyes were still watching her, and this time there was a smile upon the slightly parted lips. The girl's eyelids dropped a little and she replied with a fixed stare before once more reaching the door and passing out. "How dare she!" thought Isabel, trembling now with indignation. "She quite triumphs over one. Aunt is right; she is not nice. She seems to contrive to stand between me and papa. It is not prejudice, and I shall be very, very glad when she is gone." The door had hardly closed upon her, when, in a fretful way, Ralph Elthorne exclaimed: "Now, go on; go on!" The nurse began reading directly, an Old World poem of chivalry, honour, and self-denial; and as the soft, rich, deep tones of her voice floated through the room, Ralph Elthorne's head sank back, his eyes closed, and his breath came slowly and regularly. But the reader had grown interested in the words she read. The story of the poem seemed to fit with her own life of patient long-suffering and self-denial, and she read on, throwing more and more feeling into the writer's lines. At last, in the culminating point of the story, her voice began to tremble, her eyes became dim, the book dropped into her lap, and a low faint sob escaped from her lips, as the pent up, long suppressed agony of her heart now broke its bounds, and, as her face went down into her hands, she had to fight hard to keep from bursting into a fit of hysterical weeping.