We arranged everything as seemed best for your removal—a serious undertaking for an invalid. You, an invalid, my bright-eyed, lightfooted, moorland girl!

I do not think Mrs. Granton had a shadow of suspicion. She thanked me continually, in her warm-hearted fashion for my “great kindness.” Kindness! She also begged me to call immediately—as her friend, lest I might have any professional scruples of etiquette about interfering with Doctor Black.

Scruples! I cast them all to the winds. Come what will, I must see you, must assure myself that there is no danger, that all is done for you which gives you a fair chance of recovery.

If not—if with the clear vision that I know

I can use on occasion, I see you fading from me—I shall snatch at you. I will have you—be it only for a day or an hour, I will have you, I say,—on my heart, in my arms. My love, my darling, my wife that ought to have been—you could not die out of my arms. I will make you live—I will make you love me. I will have you for my wife yet. I will——

God's will be done!


CHAPTER X. HER STORY.

I am at home again. I sit by my bed-room fire in a new easy-chair. Oh, such care am I taken of now! I cast my eyes over the white waves of moorland:—