That was all she was doing now, seated on the grass with her arms clasped about Caius's neck, her cheek resting on his head, and her eyes fixed with mournful gaze upon the rippling water at her feet. Kenneth drew near with so noiseless a step that she knew not of his coming, and he had leisure to study her face for several minutes while she was entirely unconscious of his scrutiny. His breast heaved, his lip quivered, and his eyes filled as he gazed; for a sad change had come over the fair, young face since last he looked upon it, the bloom was all gone from cheek and lip, the temple looked sunken, the eyes unnaturally large, and, oh, the unfathomable depth of sadness in them! And the slight girlish figure had lost its roundness; the small, shapely hands were very thin and white. A bird suddenly swooped down from a tree and skimmed along just above the stream. Caius uttered a short, sharp bark and made a spring toward it, and with a deep sigh Marian awoke, released him, and turning her eyes in Kenneth's direction gave a joyful cry. In a moment she was clasped in his arms, her head pillowed on his breast, with convulsive sobbing and floods of tears, while he held her close and soothed her with tender words and caresses. "O, Kenneth, how glad I am you have come at last!" she said when she could command her voice. "It seemed so long, so very long that we had to wait; and yet you are here sooner than mother thought you could come." "I made all the haste I could, dear child," he answered, "starting early the morning after the letter reached me with the news that you were not well. What ails you, Marian, dear?" "I'm not sick, Kenneth," she said, a vivid blush suddenly suffusing her cheek. "But you have grown very thin and pale, and do not seem strong," he said, regarding her with tender, sorrowful scrutiny. "Something is amiss with you, and surely you will tell me what it is, that I may try to relieve you?" She only hid her face on his shoulder with a fresh burst of weeping. A terrible fear oppressed him as he went on questioning her about the symptoms of her disease, she still insisting that she had no pain and was not sick, though she could not deny loss of appetite, weakness and palpitation of the heart upon slight exertion. At length her reserve gave way before his loving solicitude; for she had been wont to confide her childish joys and sorrows to him in the old days before he went to Ohio, and could tell him now what she would not breathe to any other creature. "O, Kenneth!" she cried, "can't you see that my body is not sick, that it's my heart that is breaking?" His very lips grew white. "What can you mean, my poor, poor child?" he asked huskily, drawing her closer to him with a quick protecting gesture, as if he would shield her from the threatened danger.