But the cough did not go; and as the Autumn mists stole up from the river and covered the meadows with a filmy veil, beautiful to behold, the cough got worse; but the beautiful color did not go either, and so Stella was not very anxious. As for Frank himself, he treated his ailments with supreme indifference. "Do I take any medicine?" he said, in answer to Stella's questioning. "Yes, I take all the old woman--I beg his pardon!--the doctor sends. It isn't very unpleasant, and though it doesn't do me much good apparently, it seems to afford you and the aforesaid old woman some satisfaction, and so we are pleased all round." "You don't seem to take any interest in things, Frank," said Stella, one morning, when she had come into the garden to look at the trees that drew a long line of gold and brown and yellow along the river bank, and had found him leaning on the gate, his hands clasped before him, his eyes fixed on the Hall, very much as she had first seen him, the night he had come home. He looked round at her and smiled faintly. "Why don't you go and try the fish?" she said. "Or--or--go for a ride? You only wander about the gardens or in the meadows." He looked at her curiously. "Why do not you?" he said, slowly, his large blue eyes fixed on her face, which grew slowly blush-red under his regard. "You do not seem to take much interest in things, Stel. You don't go and fish, or--or--take a drive, or anything. You only wander about the garden, or in the meadows." The long lashes swept her cheeks, and she struggled with a sigh. His words had told home. "But--but," she said falteringly, "I am not a boy. Girls should stay at home and attend to their duties." "And walk and move as if they were in a dream--as if their hearts and souls were divorced from their bodies--and miles, miles away," he said, waving his thin white hand in the air slowly. Her lips quivered, and she turned her face away, but only for a moment; it was back upon him with a smile again. "You are a foolish, fanciful boy!" she said, putting her hand on his shoulder and caressing his cheek. "Perhaps so," he said. "'My fancies are more than all the world to me,' says the poet, you know," he added, bitterly. Stella's heart ached. "Are you angry with me, Frank?" she said. "Don't be!" He shook his head. "No, not angry," he said, looking out at the mist that was rising. She smothered a sigh; she understood his reproach; not a moment of the day but he accused her in his heart of betraying Lord Leycester; if he could but have known why she had done it; but that he never would know! "You are a fanciful boy," she said, with a forced lightness. "What are you dreaming about now, I wonder?" "I was wondering too," he answered, without looking at her, "I was wondering--shall I tell you----" She answered "yes," with her hand against his cheek. "I was wondering where Lord Leycester was, and how----"