The reader will easily believe that Philip Stanburne heard this speech with a joy that made him forget his anxiety about Alice. He would bring gladness to her, and with gladness, health. How bright the long future seemed for these two, true lovers always, till the end of their lives! O golden hope, fair promise of happy years! But the doctor, who had been at Chesnut Hill that morning, had heard a little faint sound in his polished black stethoscope, which was as terrible in its import as the noise of the loudest destroyers, as the crack of close thunder, the roar of cannon, the hiss of the hurricane, the explosion of a mine! CHAPTER XXXIII. THE SADDEST IN THE BOOK. Let this part of our story be quickly told, for it is very sad! Let us not dwell upon this sorrow, and analyze it, and anatomize it, and lecture upon it, as if it were merely a study for the intellect, and caused the heart no pain! It is the middle of winter. The streets of Sootythorn are sloppy with blackened snow, the sky is dreary and gray, and dirtied by the smoke from the factory-chimneys. Sootythorn is dismal, and Manchester is all in a fog. The cotton-spinners' train that goes from Sootythorn to Manchester is running into a cloud that gets ever denser and yellower, and the whistle screams incessantly. The knees of the travellers are covered with "Guardians," and "Couriers," and "Examiners," for there is not light enough to read comfortably. One manufacturer asks his neighbor a question: "Where is John Stedman of Sootythorn? He uses comin' by this train, and I haven't seen him as I cannot tell how long." The question interests us also. Where is John Stedman? Not at Chesnut Hill, certainly. There is nobody at Chesnut Hill but the old gardener and his wife. He tends the plants in the hothouse, and keeps them comfortable in this dreary Lancashire winter by the help of Lancashire coal. But the house is all shut up, except on the rare days when a bit of sunshine comes, and the old woman opens the shutters and draws up the blinds to let the bright rays in. Every thing seems ready for Alice, if she would only come. There is her little pretty room upstairs, and there are twenty things of hers in the drawing-room that wait for their absent mistress. Miss Alice is far away in the south, and her father is with her--and there is a third, who never leaves them. They had been travelling towards Italy, but when they reached Avignon, Alice became suddenly worse, and they stayed there to give her a long rest. The weather happened to be very pure and clear, and it suited her. The winter weather about Avignon is often very exhilarating and delicious, when the keen frost keeps aloof, and the dangerous winds are at rest.