Chapter 8 - Page 2

invalid were obstinately bent on remaining ill.

"I was not speaking, at the moment, to you, Mrs. Darling," said the dark gentleman, with mockery in his politeness, "but to the young lady whom I have entrusted to your charge."

"A pretty trust!" the woman replied, with a sniff

"Yes, as you kindly say, an extremely pretty trust. And now, Margaret, my dear--'--"

The fair woman walked to the window, and stared out of it with a trembling lip, and eyes that saw nothing.

"Now, Margaret, my dear, tell me for yourself, how do you feel?"

"You are very kind," answered the girl at last. "I am sure I am better. I am not very strong yet. I hope I shall get up soon."

"Is there anything you would like? Perhaps you are tired of peaches and grapes; may I send you some oranges?"

"Oh, thank you; you are very good. I am often thirsty when I waken, or rather when I leave off dreaming. I seem to dream, rather than sleep, just now."

"Poor girl!" said the dark gentleman, in a pitying voice. "And what do you dream?"

"There seems to be a dreadful quiet, smooth, white place," said the girl, slowly, "where I am; and something I feel--something, I don't know what--drives me out of it. I cannot rest in it; and then I find myself on a dark plain, and a great black horror, a kind of blackness falling in drifts, like black snow in a wind, sweeps softly over me, till I feel mixed in the blackness; and there is always some one watching me, and chasing me in the dark--some one I can't see. Then I slide into the smooth, white, horrible place again, and feel I must get away from it. Oh, I don't know which is worst! And they go and come all the while I'm asleep, I suppose."

"I am waiting for the doctor to look in again; but all I can do is to get you some Jaffa oranges, nice large ones, myself. You will oblige me, Mrs. Darling" (he turned to the housekeeper), "by placing them in Miss Burnside's room, and then, perhaps, she will find them refreshing when she wakes. Good-by for the moment, Margaret."

The fair woman said nothing, and the dark gentleman walked into the street, where a hansom cab waited for him. "Covent Garden," he cried to the cabman.

We have not for some time seen, or rather we have for some time made believe not to recognize, the Hon. Thomas Cranley, whose acquaintance (a very compromising one) we achieved early in this narrative.

Mr. Cranley, "with his own substantial private purpose sun-clear before him" (as Mr. Carlyle would have said, in apologizing for some more celebrated villain), had enticed Margaret from school. Nor had this been, to a person of his experience and resources, a feat of very great difficulty. When he had once learned, by the