turned her heart from her mother who was no longer hers, and fixed it more and more upon Herbert, the only being in the world who was hers, and in whom she could trust fully. “But if I were to marry, too!” he said to her once, in some moment of gayer spirits. “It is natural that you should marry, not unnatural,” cried Reine; “it would be right, not wretched. I might not like it; probably I should not like it--but it would not change my ideal.” This serious result had happened in respect to her mother, who could no longer be Reine’s ideal, whatever might happen. The girl was so confused in consequence, and broken away from all landmarks, that she, and those who had charge of her, had anything but easy work in the days before Herbert’s malady declared itself. This had been the saving of Reine; she had devoted herself to her sick brother heart and soul, and the jar in her mind had ceased to communicate false notes to everything around. It was now two years since the malady which had hung over him all his life, had taken a distinct form; though even now, the doctors allowed, there were special points which made Herbert unlike other consumptive patients, and sometimes inclined a physician who saw him for the first time, to entertain doubts as to what the real cause of his sufferings was, and to begin hopefully some new treatment, which ended like all the rest in disappointment. He had been sent about from one place to another, to sea air, to mountain air, to soft Italian villas, to rough homes among the hills, and wherever he went Reine had gone with him. One Winter they had passed in the south of France, another on the shores of the Mediterranean just across the Italian border. Sometimes the two went together where English ladies were seldom seen, and where the girl half afraid, clinging to Herbert’s arm as long as he was able to keep up a pretence of protecting her, and protecting him when that pretence was over, had to live the homeliest life, with almost hardship in it, in order to secure good air or tending for him.