form tenderly, as if it had been his own beloved child, and laid her on the couch. A few minutes sufficed to restore her to life, and also to consciousness. Slowly her scattered senses returned; she gazed on Sir Jasper, but her eye wandered round with an unsatisfied gaze; at last it rested on the letter, which had fallen on the ground.
"It is all true," muttered she, with a faint shudder. She pressed her hands firmly together, but the effort was vain, and she burst into a violent flood of tears. "Forgive me," she exclaimed, "I ought to wait till I get home; but I am wretched, very wretched."
The kind old man did not even attempt to speak; he knew too well the vanity of consolation, to mock her with it; but he took her hand gently, and his own eyes glittered with unusual moisture. An hour before, or an hour after, and Ethel would have locked her secret deep in her inmost heart; but now misery mastered timidity, and it was a relief to speak. Moreover, there was such encouragement in Sir Jasper's gentle and voiceless sympathy.
