"Excuse me, Miss Morgeson; I did not know you. I hope you are well."
"Come," said Charles, with his hand on the latch.
"Are you going to Mrs. Bancroft's whist party on Wednesday night, Mr.
Parker?"
"Yes; Miss Perkins was kind enough to invite me."
"Cassandra, come." And Charles opened the door. I fumbled for the flower at my belt. "It's nice to have flowers so late; don't you think so?" inhaling the fragrance of my crushed specimens; "if they would but last. Will you have it?" stretching it toward him. He was about to take it, with a blush, when Charles struck it out of my hand and stepped on it.
"Are you ready now?" he said, in a quick voice.
I declared it was nothing, when I found I was too ill to rise the next morning. At the end of three days, as I still felt a disinclination to get up, Alice sent for her physician. I told him I was sleepy and felt dull pains. He requested me to sit up in bed, and rapped my shoulders and chest with his knuckles, in a forgetful way.
"Nothing serious," he said; "but, like many women, you will continue to do something to keep in continual pain. If Nature does not endow your constitution with suffering, you will make up the loss by some fatal trifling, which will bring it. I dare say, now, that after this, you never will be quite well."
"I will take care of my health."
He looked into my face attentively.