won't you try to persuade him to retain me as his curate? If Nora" (with a little gulp) "is to miss you so immensely in that splendid home of Keston's, just think how solitary I shall feel, losing her, and you, and my old parish."

“I shall never marry at all, Will."

"My dear girl," he said, in his genial, brotherly way, "such a notion carries absurdity written on the face of it. You will marry, of course; and marry a clergyman too, I hope, for Nora's sake as well as yours-and his. There, that wish surely ought to have double weight from me, because, if you don't wed the parson, Ipersonally-shall reap the benefit."

"How?"

"In that case Keston intends to give me the living."

"If I don't marry?"

"If you don't marry a parson."

"Put down the umbrella, Will; you hold it so low I can scarcely breathe."

CHAPTER IX.

"Then, when we stood in the chamber, and knew not the words we were saying."

TTER solitude had never held such silence

UTTE

and loneliness for Nora as that which wrapped her as she sat beside the dead; in that little room which had been home to her for so long, and in which it was so sadly strange to sit with motionless hands and silent lips; after those constant tasks and that constant companionship of the time which was gone for ever now. Could it really have been that sometimes she had felt lonely, even through those days and nights when Helen lay here, needing her, and loving her? Ah! could it be possible? In her isolation now, and in that terrible hush of sorrow and loneliness, Nora could only look back longingly to those times, dreamily and vaguely

envying her old self, because there had been life and sound about her then, and a warm and living glance met hers.

But now the room was filled with cold, and awe, and silence; and, chilled and bewildered, Nora sat in this new loneliness, wondering— when any stray sound reached her from the street or from the house-how it could be that other lives were passing as usual; that duties were being performed, and pleasures taken, just as if the world were still what it was long ago— when she remembered having duties to perform and pleasures to enjoy, even herself. But, then, it was so long ago, and the world was so different. This whole world was filled with gloom, and a great awful stillness. What could it mean, when these passing voices broke it, as if they could not know of this dreamy whiteness which covered the still features and the dead smile! As if they did not know that it was all over now-that life was gone, and only death was left.

With her tired hands clasped in her lap, but her head raised in the intensity of these new feverish thoughts which swayed her without will of hers—as thoughts often do in such keen anguish-Nora sat as she had done through all

the thirty hours since Helen's death.

Now

and then the mistress of the house, who had learned to love the girl through her long, untiring, and uncomplaining attendance on Miss Archer, came softly into the room and tried to tempt her away. She had put a nice little fire in the sitting-room, she said, because her lodger was out, and this chamber was cold as a well. Would not a little breakfast do her good? "My dear," she said at last, roused to real terror by Nora's changed voice when she thanked her, and by that wild, bewildered gaze of the dark, puzzled eyes, "if you go on like this, we shall soon have you lying there too. I'm sure nobody would know you as it is, and I shall have this laid at my door."

"I will come," said Nora, rising wearily when Mrs. Prin pleaded so, in the morning of this second day; "I will take what you give me. You have been very kind to us both; I will not bring you more trouble if I can help it."

Then Mrs. Prin started forward in a hurry, hearing that tired sob. But Nora's eyes were still quite dry in their pained perplexity, and she only said she had a headache-rather a giddy headache-when the woman questioned her so anxiously.

"I don't think I will go away from here," she said, sinking back upon her seat. "The room moves with me when I move. I am better here. Don't you know how soon they will take her from me, and then I can come back to her. No; let me stay

never

now."

So Mrs. Prin left her once more, in that great stillness of pain and bewilderment; and when, an hour afterwards (with a sensation of hope and excitement which was strange to her) she opened the folding-doors between this room and the sitting-room, she found Nora still sitting motionless, beside the cold, covered face which could not brighten now to meet the yearning, clinging gaze.

"Miss Archer," she said, softly-for Helen had let it be believed here that they were sisters-" will you come here? This room is at your service, and you are wanted."

Nora had been summoned to more than one hard and bitter conference through these two days; and now she rose mechanically, and almost as if in a dream, to meet one more.

"I have such a strange headache,” she said, wearily, as she came towards the open doors, with her hand upon her forehead. “I

never re