"Would you have had her marry him when death had set in? After the doctors had met that day, it was known throughout the house that nothing could save her. At least, they said so. The old malady of the spring had but been lying dormant; it was in her still; and the terrible trouble she went through had brought it forth again. Under the very happiest circumstances, had she married you, even--and I suppose that might have been _her_ idea of happiness," added Rose, satirically--"she could not have lived long. De la Chasse saw her for a few minutes on the day they were to have been married, and expressed himself very much concerned, and all that, as a matter of course; I don't suppose he broke his heart over it." "And she has been ill ever since?" "Ever since. The disease has fluctuated, as you may imagine; some weeks she would be at death's door, some weeks comparatively well; but it has all the while been progressing on gradually to the ending. Frederick St. John"--and Rose stepped up to him in her excitement--"I don't believe you were ever absent for one minute from her mind; by day and by night it was filled with that miserable love for you; and the yearning wish, destined not to be gratified, was ever upon her--that you would come and see her before she died." "_Why_ did you not let me know it?--why could you not have written to me?" he asked, in a sharp tone of pain. "For one thing, I tell you, I did not know where to write. For another, Adeline would not have let me. She had an idea that you did not care to come to her--that you perhaps would not, if summoned. And I"--Rose paused a moment, and angrily compressed her repentant lips--"I could wish my tongue had been bitten out for a share I took in the past. There's not the least doubt that one ingredient in Adeline's cup of bitterness was worse than all the rest--the thought of Sarah Beauclerc." He uttered an exclamation. "And of your love for her. And I say I wish Sarah Beauclerc had been smothered, and I with her, if you like, before I had ever breathed her name to Adeline. But for that, but for deeming that she was your true love, and would some time be your wife, Adeline would have sent to the far ends of the earth after you for a parting interview." He sat, leaning his head upon his fingers, looking into the fire. "What a miserable business it seems altogether! Nothing but cross-purposes, the one with the other. Sarah Beauclerc!" "Are you still engaged--perhaps at a moment like this I may be pardoned for asking it--to Sarah Beauclerc?" "I never was engaged to Sarah Beauclerc. I had once a sort of passing fancy for her; I don't know that it was more. I have had no thought of her, or of any one else, since I parted from Adeline." "In a letter I had from London, not very long ago," resumed Rose, slowly, "your name was coupled with Miss Sarah Beauclerc's. It said you were her shadow." "Who said it?" "Never mind. It was a lady."