Adele has been into the sick-chamber from time to time,--once led away weeping by the good Doctor, when the son had fallen upon his wild talk of school-days; once, too, since consciousness has come to him again, but before her letter had been read. He had met her with scarce more than a touch of those fevered fingers, and a hard, uncertain quiver of a smile, which had both shocked and disappointed the poor girl. She thought he would have spoken some friendly consoling word of her mother; but his heart, more than his strength, failed him. Her mournful, pitying eyes were a reproach to him; they had haunted him through the wakeful hours of two succeeding nights, and now, under the light of that laggard letter, they blaze with a new and an appealing tenderness. His fingers still puzzle wearily with that tangle of the fringe. The noon passes. The aunt advises a little broth. But no, his strength is feeding itself on other aliment. The Doctor comes in with a curiously awkward attempt at gentleness and noiselessness of tread, and, seeing his excited condition, repeats to him some texts which he believes must be consoling. Reuben utters no open dissent; but through and back of all he sees the tender eyes of Adele, which, for the moment, outshine the promises, or at the least illuminate them with a new meaning. "I must see Adele," he says to the Doctor; and the message is carried,--she herself presently bringing answer, with a rich glow upon her cheek. "Reuben has sent for me,"--she murmurs it to herself with pride and joy. She is in full black now; but never had she looked more radiantly beautiful than when she stepped to the side of the sick-bed, and took the hand of Reuben with an eager clasp--that was met, and met again. The Doctor is in his study, (the open door between,) and the spinster is fortunately just now busy at some of her household duties. Reuben fumbles under his pillow nervously for that cherished bit of paper, (Adele knows already its history,) and when he has found it and shown it (his thin fingers crumpling it nervously) he says, "Thank you for this, Adele!" She answers only by clasping his hand with a sudden mad pressure of content, while the blood mounted into either cheek with a rosy exuberance that magnified her beauty tenfold. He saw it,--he felt it all; and through her beaming eyes, so full of tenderness and love, saw the world to which he had bidden adieu shining before him more beguilingly than ever. Yesterday it was a dim and weary world that he could leave without a pang; to-day it is a brilliant world, where hopes, promises, joys pile in splendid proportions. He tells her this. "Yesterday I would have died with scarce a regret; to-day, Adele, I would live." "You will, you will, Reuben!" and she grappled more and more passionately those shrunken fingers. "'T is not hopeless!" (sobbing). "No, no, Adele, darling, not hopeless. The cloud is lifted,--not hopeless!"