"So you don't want me, Edward? I think you're very unkind," returned Miss Geare, evidently wounded, but with a patient dignity Harold had not expected. He noticed that ever since she entered her gaze had wandered, at intervals, to an oil-painting of a fine-looking young man in uniform which hung over the mantelpiece. "But I know better than to take you at your word. You are all I have left--my dear Adrian's brother--and----" She broke down, and wiped the slow tears of age from her eyes. Sir Edward gave an impatient sigh, and Harold interposed. "Allow me to remind you, Miss Geare, that my patient has had a very severe attack, and the quieter he is the better. Everything depends on that. I must go home now; and may I request the pleasure of your company to the gate, if you are ready?" "Yes, do go home to Bijou!" fretfully murmured the invalid. And Miss Geare, after bestowing an affectionate farewell on the unresponsive Sir Edward, allowed Harold to politely conduct her to the lodge gate. "Poor Edward!" she began, as they went down the drive, "he allows illness to sour his temper, and it's such a pity! But I take no notice--he's my dear Adrian's only brother, and I can't bear to stay away from the house. Did you see the portrait over the mantelpiece?--that was my Adrian. I was young, and pretty too, in those days, though you mayn't believe it----" "I quite believe it," said Harold kindly, touched by the spectacle of this forlorn old age. "Adrian was so proud of Edward. He was so much thought of in India, and is very, very clever--but not equal to my Adrian--oh, no; nobody ever could be as handsome and noble as he was! When I heard he was killed in the Mutiny, I thought I should die too; I think it must have killed something inside me, for I've never been the same since. I get confused, and I can't remember things----Yes, I'm coming. Very sorry to have kept you waiting." The humble apology was to Miss Pepper, who, with a most unamiable countenance, was standing just outside the gate. Miss Geare hastily said farewell, and Harold could hear her companion scolding her vigorously as they went down the road. But, as he thought of the faded, antique love story which had ended so tragically, he could not but feel sorry for poor little eccentric Miss Geare--it was so evident that the best part of her had been buried in her lover's grave. Her eyes must have been rather like May's, he thought, before sorrow had given them that vacant expression; and then he wondered, for the hundredth time, what Mrs. Burnside was doing in London, and whether she thought of him as often as he did of her. CHAPTER IX. _Vanitas Vanitatum._