254 CHAPTER XII. In the June twilight-in the lessening twilight- DINA MULOCK. D URING several days, Gabrielle con tinued, greatly to Cissy's delight, to answer James coolly, to look at him unconcernedly, to throw cold water upon his constant efforts to please her. James, however, at this time evinced himself to be of a truly persevering disposition. The first shock over, he rallied his forces, and applied himself, heart and soul, to the work of regaining what he had lost. Every now and then, a frenzy of impatience came over him; prompting him, follow what would, to end this suspense at once. But the thought of all that he might forego by such precipitancy, restrained him; he calmed himself, and plodded on. His anxiety about her health, was a continual torment. Mrs. Barber's letter, the hereditary doom, weighed on his mind: he could not throw them off. The weather, just now, was unusually fine. It was one of those genial autumns which, but for the falling foliage, might delude us into the belief that spring, forestalling winter, had returned, to give us a pleasant surprise. Gabrielle, however, did not lose her cough. It grew no worse, perhaps; but it grew no better: and no one could be long in her company, without perceiving that she was very weak. James insisted on Olivia's writing to request a visit from a certain eminent physician specially eminent in his treatment of consumption. And although Olivia said, and the family doctor, with a suppressed smile, hinted, that, in so simple a case, it was scarcely necessary to send from Yorkshire to London for advice: James would take no denial. So Olivia did write; and the physician came and his visit, for the first time, awakened in Gabrielle's mind a suspicion that she was more than commonly delicate. Olivia, afraid of alarming her, said nothing of the distance from which he had been summoned; but Gabrielle gathered it from some speech of his own, and was startled accordingly. And-now she thought of it-how long her cough did stay on! Oh, I hope I am not going to die," she said to herself: "I could not bear to die !" Where, then, was the calm indifference to this world and its concerns, which she had brought from Eversfield? Where the long How ing after the higher world, which had, at the same time, possessed her? Where indeed? She looked at James; and her heart felt as though it would burst. could she be resigned to leave a world where he was? Ah, she could not. It might be idolatry; but it was the truth; Heaven would scarcely be Heaven to her, she thought, without him. "He will not separate us? We have been so happy," was Charlotte Bronté's dying cry, as her husband leant over her pillow. And thus, every year, cry many: wives, lovers, children, friends. These human ties entwine themselves so closely about our human hearts. Too often they blind our eyes to the Divine Love whence they came the Love which is their Parent, Author of their existence without which they could not be. When her interview with Dr. W was VOL. II. S over; when he had stethoscoped, tapped, and questioned, to his heart's content, and had bowed her out of the room, Gabrielle went quietly upstairs, and, falling on her knees at her bedside, prayed-as she had never prayed before-that she might live, and not die. "Olivia," she said, some hours later, stealing as quietly into Olivia's room: “Olivia, what does Dr. W think of me? Don't keep anything from me. I would rather hear the worst." "My dear child!" said Olivia, smiling, and laying her tatting aside: keep anything from you? frightening yourself, I see; manner of terrible ideas. "Why should I You have been conjuring up all He thinks you very delicate, certainly; and he says that you require a great deal of care. But that is all; there is no disease. And he has prescribed a remedy which he believes will |