In her pitiful weakness, Nora obeyed without understanding; and while she lay thus, resting the sight which alone had awakened, memory slowly gave back a little of the past. She knew now where she had seen this patientlooking, fair-haired lady. It was among the flowers where she had found Micky, and among the pictures at which they had looked together; and it was in a peaceful, sheltered spot, where everything was silent and fragrant and dim; and where she had stood with her while some one else A pain like a stab shot through Nora's heart, and her eyes were opened with a startled feverish haste. Yes, it was Miss Giffard. Nora remembered it all now. The cottage in the park; the shadowy path among the yews; Micky at work among the verbenas; the paintings; the gentle words and handclasp of the sad-looking lady; and then 66 "My dear," whispered the old nurse in a timid, and even troubled voice, as she came up to Nora on the opposite side the bed, and bent her head to the pillows, "don't look so frightened. She will awake presently, and never know what she has done. It was right for you to have the medicine, so I let her give it. I saw what she was going to do, and I let her. She would be troubled, and ill perhaps, if we woke her. Take no notice, my dear. See how calm she sits. What need for you to look so terrified?" Ah! what need indeed? Miss Giffard sat utterly motionless in her sleep, and now the lids had fallen over that vague, fixed gaze, and her hands were folded placidly in her lap. No, no need for fear. But something else was awakened now in Nora's mind, and these words (which, simple as they were, had been the first to break the silence of that long struggle with memory) seemed to make her even more weak and childish than she had felt in that long dream of hers; and she looked one moment into the old nurse's kindly face, and then burst into a feeble, tremulous fit of crying. "Never mind, my dear," the old woman whispered, soothingly stroking the girl's wan, white cheeks; "don't try to stop the tears; let them come. Tears are healthy physic for a sick soul. Let them come, my dear. They will not wake my mistress; and they sound girlish and natural, and do even me good after this terrible time when you didn't know tears from laughter, and suffered too much to know what your trouble was. Cry on, dear. This is better to see than-what has passed." VOL. III. K 130 CHAPTER XI. "Love lies deeper than all words. And not the spoken but the speechless love EALTH and strength were creeping slowly, H' slowly back. The agony of physical suffering was gone, and there was nothing to struggle with now but a great absorbing languor. This languor was even yet a mystery to Nora herself, and on this very day—when, for the first time, she had been allowed to go beyond the garden-gate-she was trying vainly to comprehend it. "I should have thought," she said, pushing the short, clustering hair from her temples, and then holding her thin white hand to the light, as if she felt that it must be transparent, "that it would have taken years of sickness to make me feel as I do. Oh, Celia, I am so ashamed to be such a trouble, and such a burden, and such an expense. And I have no right to be here; and but for your real kindness" 66 "You ought to be quite tired of saying that sort of thing now, Nora," observed Miss Pennington, in her gentle, matter-of-fact way; and trying to lose the fear with which she always now met Nora's eyes. Everything else tires you, and I'm sure that very unnatural idea ought to do so. See, here comes Micky with his daily flowers. Do you know that really among those who have been anxious about you, Nora dear, Michael ought to stand quite high. You have no idea of how he grew to look, through all that time of your great danger— But don't let us talk about that time. We have you among us once more; that is pleasure enough to counterbalance all the past pain-to me, at any rate." 66 When," asked Nora, smiling a little because she saw what a great effort Celia made to appear confident of her friend's restoration to them, "did you come, Celia? I thought-I don't think it was part of my dream when I thought you and I had parted for ever, and-" "A dream, of course; only a dream," put in |