"How can I prevent you? Wherever we may meet again, I shall be glad to see yon. I can say no more than that."
"But you will remain here?"
"I hope to remain—but cannot be sure, yet."
He waited a moment; then he said, "You believe in 'duty.' I heard you say so. Have you no duties to take you back to England?"
"None, at present. 'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.'"
"Perhaps it need not be 'evil,' if you allowed another—a man you believe to be 'honest,'—to share the burthen of those duties, whatever they may be."
She started; not visibly, but mentally. A disagreeable suggestion obtruded itself; she tried to chase it away, as she replied hurriedly—
"My duties are not pressing for consideration yet; and, however irksome, I hope to be able to cope with them, unassisted, later. I must now go to my sick friend. Good-bye."
She held out her hand. He tried to hold it an instant in his, but she withdrew it quickly. And yet he did not feci entirely baffled, as she left the apartment with a light step. On the contrary, he had made as much way, perhaps, as could reasonably be expected in the course of four weeks.
The doctor did not see Miss Baring that day. His medicines had relieved her cough, but she was very weak. She got up, and lay in her shabby grey dressing-gown on the sofa, blinking with her short-sighted eyes at the wall opposite, while Elizabeth piled wood on the fire with
