It may be imagined that after this there was very little said of the house in Edinburgh, which now, indeed, it was impossible to do any thing about till the term at Martinmas. But Lily, I think, never alluded to the Martinmas term. Her heart sank so that it recovered itself again with great difficulty, and the very suggestion of the thing she had so longed for, and fixed all her wishes upon, now brought over her a sickness and faintness both of body and soul. When some one talked by chance of the maids going to their new places at the term, the color forsook her face, and Helen Blythe was much alarmed on one such occasion, believing her friend was going to faint. Lily did not faint. What good would that do? she said to herself with a sort of cynicism which began to appear in her. She dug metaphorically her heels into the soil, and stood fast, resisting all such sudden weaknesses. Perhaps Ronald was surprised, perhaps he was not quite so glad as he expected to be, when she ceased speaking on that subject; but, on the whole, he concluded that it was something gained. If he could but get her to take things quietly, to wait until he was quite ready to set up such an establishment as he thought suitable, or, better still, till Sir Robert died and rewarded her supposed obedience by leaving her his fortune, which was her right, how fortunate that would be! But Lily was taking things too quietly, he thought, with a little tremor. It was not natural for her to give in so completely. He watched her with a little alarm during that short stay of his. Not a word of the cherished object which had always been coming up in their talk came from Lily’s lips again. She made no further allusion to their possible home or life together; her jests about cooking his dinner for him, about the Scotch collops and the howtowdie, were over. Indeed, for that time all her jests were over; she was serious as the gravest woman, no longer his laughing girl, running over with high spirits and nonsense. This change made Ronald very uncomfortable, but he consoled himself with thinking that in a light heart like Lily’s no such thing could last, and that she would soon recover her better mood again.