"I know," he says, gently for him, usually so brusque and careless. "But she will grieve for you so. She has grown to love you as a daughter. She has no one else to cling to--she is sensitive and loving, who has buried all she loves, and is so ill and lonely." "What would you have me do?" Reine asks, irresolute and pained. "Stay with her till the last, if that were possible," he answers. "It cannot be for long. Do you know that her days are numbered?" She starts, and trembles. "No, I thought that this genial climate was to restore her health," she exclaims. "We hoped it, but all has failed," he answers, sadly. "She fails daily and rapidly. There is no power in medicine, no magic in these balmy airs to lengthen her life. She is surely fading from us." The dark eyes brim over with sorrow. "How long?" she asks, faintly. "I cannot tell," he answers, sadly. "Her disease is too insidious for one to say with any certainty. It may be hours, days, weeks, months, for who can prognosticate surely the coming of that dread enemy that flatters only to destroy." "Then I must not leave her," she answers, warmly, "and yet, I know that I ought to go back to America." "Can you not write?" he inquires. "I must do so," she answers, "and trust to God that my letter may go safely across the ocean. Mrs. Odell has been too kind and tender to me for me to desert her now. Believe me, I did not know that the end was so near. I thought, I hoped, she would get well, but now I will not leave her while she lives." "God bless you!" Doctor Franks exclaims, with strong but repressed emotion. "Will you go in and tell her that? I left her in the bitterest distress over the thought of your going." "Yes," Reine answers, but when he has left her she lingers a little to regain her composure before returning to the presence of the hapless lady whom death had marked for his own. The sun is shining on the soft, blue water, the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing. Surely, this clime is fair and balmy enough to woo expiring life back to its tenement of clay. And yet, she, too, her last loved friend, thinks Reine, must go from her out into the darkness and dreariness of death. Crushing back one hopeless sigh, Reine goes back to the shaded, quiet chamber, where the sick woman lies on her silken couch, with tearful eyes veiled by the thin, emaciated fingers on which the shining wealth of rings hang loosely. She kneels down and presses her soft, loving lips on the thin, fever-flushed cheek. "You are crying for me," she says, with an earnest penitence and regret. "I was cruel and ungrateful to talk of leaving you. Can you forgive me?" "You are sorry; you will stay!" the sick woman murmurs, with piteous eagerness. "Yes, as long as you live, I will never leave you nor forsake you," Reine murmurs, with all the solemnity of a vow, thinking sadly to herself that this is the only heart left on earth to which she is near and dear.