“Come back to your chamber,” said Catharine, gently; “put on a nice dress, and we will go in together; they will be very glad to see us!” “Did they tell you so?” inquired Elsie, quickly. “Yes, they told me so!” “Did they?—that was kind. But I can’t accept it, you know. When the people off yonder in the Bible sent their poor goat into the wilderness loaded down with their sins, he never came back to disgrace them, but lay down and died of hunger in the woods.” “But you are not driven away—you are not alone or hungry!” “Oh, yes, I am!—here, here!” said the poor creature, pressing a hand to her side, and rocking back and forth as with pain; “but it don’t kill, this hunger. I starve and starve, but never die. Hush, they will hear me. Go back and shut the door. I like to sit just as I am; but don’t tell for anything.” Catharine hesitated, and made another effort to win the poor creature from her uncomfortable position. But Elsie was in a positive mood, and would neither go into the library or to her own room, though the morning was chilly, and her raiment so insufficient; nothing would urge her to move. “I know—I know,” she said, impatiently, when Catharine urged this, “it is cold, it makes me shiver all over; but then you can guess how it is. I am to take all the cold, too, with the wakefulness and watching, it is a part of me this cold; when I tremble, they smile. Do you know I never smile: that is left to them!” “Then,” said Catharine, gently, “I will stay with you.” “No, no. The cold is catching, you will take it!” “But I must, unless you will go with me!” “Not there,” pleaded Elsie, pointing to the library. “No, to our room.” “Well, if _you_ are cold, I will go!” After that day, Catharine often found Elsie watching by the library-door, as she came out from her morning studies. CHAPTER XLIV. THE ITALIAN VILLA. Within sight of the library window, and down upon the sloping grounds that rolled in broken hollows to the sea, Catharine had noticed the building of a pretty Italian villa, that for a month or two of the spring had been throwing out some new wing or cornice through the trees that were to embower it. Even the workmen’s hammers could now and then be heard in the stillness of the morning, when nothing but the birds and those who toil for their daily bread are abroad.