“Sir, I am both surprised and happy to be able to announce your convalescence; and it is to the devoted attention of this young girl,” designating Ella, “that, under divine Providence, you owe your life.” So spake the man of science, not aware of the whole truth, as we know it, and he spake as he thought. The sick man turned a grateful look on his young nurse, gently raising the hand she had placed in his to his pallid lips. Many a time, as he daily grew stronger, would D’Arcy desire to ask after Evelyn; and yet, simple as was the question, it appeared as if his tongue refused to frame it. “Strange that she never inquires—never comes,” he mused. “Were not Ella so calm, I should say her mother, too, must be ill.” At length, he determined to solve his doubts—“Your dear mother, my child, and Miss Mildmay—tell me of them?” “Poor mama,” replied the young girl, “is not very well.” “Nothing serious, I trust.” “Oh! no. She caught cold, I believe, the last time she was out.” D’Arcy sighed—in his heart he maligned poor Evelyn as a true woman of the world, a fashionable coquette, heartless as she was beautiful; and thinking thus, he unconsciously watched the graceful, half-childish form of Ella, as she noiselessly stole about the room, or bent over her tapestry frame, till at length he grew to listen eagerly for her coming and regret her parting step. Sweetly would the tones of her silvery voice fall on his ear, as, reclining on a couch propped up by cushions, he listened while she read to him extracts from Byron, Wordsworth, Tennyson, or some noble bard of his own fair land. At such times he would name her, half in jest, “Elaine, the lily maid,” who died of love for the brave Sir Launcelot. One afternoon, as the invalid drew fresh life from the warm beams of the mid-day sun, his young companion, seated on a low stool at his feet, her fairy fingers busily engaged with her tapestry, D’Arcy said—“Sweet Elaine! shall we read, or shall we have a little quiet talk together?” With a sweet smile, she answered, still diligently plying her needle: “We will converse to-day—for I must finish this cushion for mama by the time she is quite well.” But D’Arcy appeared embarrassed; and, after a pause of some minutes’ duration, he probably said just the thing he had never intended to utter: “My child, could you love?” Wonderingly, Ella raised her soft blue eyes, and fixed them on the face of the speaker—“Why, certainly,” she said; “I dearly, dearly love my mother.” “And none other?” “Oh! yes, indeed—Mary—our kind, good Mary, for example. You, too, of course,” blushing slightly—“you are now another dear friend.” “But, Ella, listen. Could you, for instance, love as—as—Elaine loved Launcelot?” She paused. “I have never thought of that—at any rate, if he had not loved me, I should never have been so silly as to care for him.” “No—but supposing he had loved you?”