"Indeed, no. He had rheumatic fever some years ago," she added, "and has never been strong since."
"Has he heart disease?" questioned the clergyman. He thought the young man had just that look.
"We fear his heart is weak," replied Mrs. Carradyne.
"But that may be only your fancy, you know, Aunt Emma," spoke Miss Monk reproachfully. She and her father were both passionately attached to Hubert; they resented any doubt cast upon his health.
"Oh, of course," assented Mrs. Carradyne, who never resented anything.
"We shall be good friends, I trust," said Eliza, with a beaming smile, as her hand lay in Mr. Grame's when he was leaving.
"Indeed I hope so," he answered. "Why not?"
III.
Summer lay upon the land. The landscape stretched out before Leet Hall was fair to look upon. A fine expanse of wood and dale, of trees in their luxuriant beauty; of emerald-green plains, of meandering streams, of patches of growing corn already putting on its yellow hue, and of the golden sunlight, soon to set and gladden other worlds, that shone from the deep-blue sky. Birds sang in their leafy shelters, bees were drowsily humming as they gathered the last of the day's honey, and butterflies flitted from flower to flower with a good-night kiss.
At one of the windows stood, in her haughty beauty, Eliza Monk. Not, surely, of the lovely scene before her was she thinking, or her face might have worn a more pleasing expression. Rather did she seem to gaze, and with displeasure, at two or three people who were walking in the distance: Lucy Carradyne side by side with the clergyman, and Miss Kate Dancox pulling at his coat-tails.