"Like bats and owls, And such melancholy fowls, At the rising of the day." "If you please, Miss Craven, do you feel well enough to see visitors?" She looks up astonished. "I'm well enough for anything; but I'm sure I don't know who is likely to visit me." "Mr. Gerard was asking whether he might speak to you 'm?" "Certainly not--I mean yes--No.--Yes, I suppose--if he wishes," replies the girl, stammering hopelessly. Miss Craven looks rather small, and excessively childish, sunk in her huge elbow-chair; a white wrapper envelopes her figure; her hair, which she has not taken the trouble to dress properly, is twisted up in the loosest, unfashionablest, sweetest great knot at the back of her neck; while a cherry-coloured ribbon coquettishly snoods her noble small head: the innocentest, freshest, shyest rosebud-face, and the liquidest southern eyes, complete the picture. St. John apparently treads hard upon the heels of the messenger, for, before permission is well accorded him, he is in his mistress's presence. Upon his brown face is untold gladness--in his eyes enormous love; and in them lurks also a look of half-malicious, half-tender mirth. She rises, and then sits down again, in unutterable confusion; and at length holds out her hand with distant diffidence to him, while as intense a blush as ever made mortal woman call upon the hills to cover her, bathes every inch of her that is visible. Her cheeks feel like gigantic red globes, over which her eyes have difficulty in looking. _His_ eyes, laughing, pitiless, yet impassioned, refuse to leave her. "You did not give me so cold a greeting when I last saw you, Essie?" he says, with an enraging smile of passionate triumph. She turns away her head, and covers her face with both hands; but, in the interstices between her fingers, the lovely carnation blazes manifestly vivid. "Oh, don't--don't be so cruel!" she murmurs, in a stifled voice. "The truth can never be cruel!" he says quietly, smiling still; and so kneels down on the floor beside her. But she only murmurs, "Go away; _please_ go away! please let me alone!"--the words coming half-broken, half-lost, from behind the covering of her hands. He puts up his, and tries to draw away the screen from her shamed discomfited face, saying, "Look at me, Essie!" But she, with all her feeble strength, resists. "I cannot!--I cannot!" she cries, vehemently; "don't ask me! Why didn't I die? When they saw I was getting well, they ought to have killed me. Oh, I wish they had!" "I'm rather glad, on the whole, they did not," he answers, gravely; and so, with one final effort, he being strong, and she being weak, he obtains possession of her two hands, and her face lies bare, unshaded--dyed with an agony of shame--clothed with great beauty--under the hungry tenderness of his happy eyes.