"What was I to say to this? How was I to set my foot down to crush this blooming happiness of hers?

"You do not often look as if you loved me," I said at last.

"That is only my way," she answered. "I can't be soft and purring like many women. I don't care to be always kissing and hanging about anybody.

But if you are afraid I don't love you enough--well! I will ask you what you think in ten years' time."

"What would you say if I told you I had once loved a girl better than I do you?" I asked.

"That's not true," she said, sharply. "I've known you all your life, and you could not hide such a thing from your mother and me. You are only laughing at me, Martin."

"Heaven knows I'm not laughing," I answered, solemnly; "it's no laughing matter. Julia, there is a girl I love better than you, even now."

The color and the smile faded out of her face, leaving it ashy pale. Her lips parted once or twice, but her voice failed her. Then she broke out into a short, hysterical laugh.

"You are talking nonsense, dear Martin!" she gasped; "you ought not! I am not very strong. Get me a glass of water."

I fetched a glass of water from the kitchen; for the servant, who had been at work, had gone home, and we were quite alone in the house. When I returned, her face was still working with nervous twitchings.

"Martin, you ought not!" she repeated, after she had swallowed some water. "Tell me it is a joke directly."

"I cannot," I replied, painfully and sorrowfully; "it is the truth, though I would almost rather face death than own it. I love you dearly, Julia; but I love another woman better. God help us both!"

There was dead silence in the room after those words. I could not hear Julia breathe or move, and I could not look at her. My eyes were turned toward the window and the islands across the sea, purple and hazy in the distance.

"Leave me!" she said, after a very long stillness; "go away, Martin."

"I cannot leave you alone," I exclaimed; "no, I will not, Julia. Let me tell you more; let me explain it all. You ought to know every thing now."

"Go away!" she repeated, in a slow, mechanical tone.

I hesitated still, seeing her white and trembling, with her eyes glassy and fixed. But she motioned me from her toward the door, and her pale lips parted again to reiterate her command.

How I crossed that room I do not know; but the moment after I had closed the door I heard the key turn in the lock. I dared not quit the house and leave her alone in such a state; and I longed ardently to hear the clocks chime five, and the sound of Johanna's wheels on the roughly-paved street. She could not be here yet for a full half-hour, for she had to go up to our house in the Grange Road and come back again. What if Julia should have fainted, or be dead!

That was one of the longest half-hours in my life. I stood at the street-door watching and waiting, and nodding to people who passed by, and who simpered at me in the most inane fashion.

"The fools!" I called them to myself. At length Johanna turned the corner, and her pony-carriage came rattling cheerfully over the large round stones. I ran to meet her.

"For Heaven's sake, go to Julia!" I cried. "I have told her."

"And what does she say?" asked Johanna.

"Not a word, not a syllable," I replied, "except to bid me go away. She has locked herself into the drawing-room."

"Then you had better go away altogether," she said, "and leave me to deal with her. Don't come in, and then I can say you are not here."

A friend of mine lived in the opposite house, and, though I knew he was not at home, I knocked at his door and asked permission to sit for a while in his parlor.

The windows looked into the street, and there I sat watching the doors of our new house, for Johanna and Julia to come out. No man likes to be ordered out of sight, as if he were a vagabond or a criminal, and I felt myself aggrieved and miserable.

At length the door opposite opened, and Julia appeared, her face completely hidden behind a veil. Johanna helped her into the low carriage, as if she had been an invalid, and paid her those minute trivial attentions which one woman showers upon another when she is in great grief. Then they drove off, and were soon out of my sight.

By this time our dinner-hour was near, and I knew my mother would be looking out for us both. I was thankful to find at the table a visitor, who had dropped in unexpectedly: one of my father's patients--a widow, with a high color, a loud voice, and boisterous spirits, who kept up a rattle of conversation with Dr. Dobree. My mother glanced anxiously at me very often, but she could say little.

"Where is Julia?" she had inquired, as we sat down to dinner without her.

"Julia?" I said, quite absently; "oh! she is gone to the Vale, with Johanna Carey."

"Will she come back to-night?" asked my mother.

"Not to-night," I said, aloud; but to myself I added, "nor for many nights to come; never, most probably, while I am under this roof. We have been building our house upon the sand, and the floods have come, and the winds have blown, and the house has fallen; but my mother knows nothing of the catastrophe yet."

If it were possible to keep her ignorant of it! But that could not be.

She read trouble in my face, as clearly as one sees a thunder-cloud in the sky, and she could not rest till she had fathomed it. After she and our guest had left us, my father lingered only a few minutes. He was not a man that cared for drinking much wine, with no companion but me, and he soon pushed the decanters from him.

"You are as dull as a beetle to-night, Martin," he said. "I think I will go and see how your mother and Mrs. Murray get along together."

He went his way, and I went mine--up into my own room, where I should be alone to think over things. It was a pleasant room, and had been mine from my boyhood. There were some ugly old pictures still hanging against the walls, which I could not find in my heart to take down. The model of a ship I had carved with my penknife, the sails of which had been made by Julia, occupied the top shelf over my books. The first pistol I had ever possessed lay on the same shelf. It was my own den, my nest, my sanctuary, my home within the home. I could not think of myself being quite at home anywhere else.

Of late I had been awakened in the night two or three times, and found my mother standing at my bedside, with her thin, transparent fingers shading the light from my eyes. When I remonstrated with her she had kissed me, smoothed the clothes about me, and promised meekly to go back to bed. Did she visit me every night? and would there come a time when she could not visit me?

CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH.

BROKEN OFF.

As I asked myself this question, with an unerring premonition that the time would soon come when my mother and I would be separated, I heard her tapping lightly at the door. She was not in the habit of leaving her guests, and I was surprised and perplexed at seeing her.

"Your father and Mrs. Murray are having a game of chess," she said, answering my look of astonishment. "We can be alone together half an hour. And now tell me what is the matter? There is something going wrong with you."

She sank down weariedly into a chair, and I knelt down beside her. It was almost harder to tell her than to tell Julia; but it was worse than useless to put off the evil moment. Better for her to hear all from me before a whisper reached her from any one else.

"Johanna came here," she continued, "with a face as grave as a judge, and asked for Julia in a melancholy voice. Has there been any quarrel between you two?"

She was accustomed to our small quarrels, and to setting them right again; for we were prone to quarrel in a cousinly fashion, without much real bitterness on either side, but with such an intimate and irritating knowledge of each other's weak points, that we needed a peace-maker at hand.

"Mother, I am not going to marry my cousin Julia," I said.

"So I have heard before," she answered, with a faint smile. "Come, come, Martin! it is too late to talk boyish nonsense like this."

"But I love somebody else," I said, warmly, for my heart throbbed at the thought of Olivia; "and I told Julia so this afternoon. It is broken off for good now, mother."

She gave me no answer, and I looked up into her dear face in alarm. It had grown rigid, and a peculiar blue tinge of pallor was spreading over it. Her head had fallen back against the chair. I had never seen her look so death-like in any of her illnesses, and I sprang to my feet in terror. She stopped me by a slight convulsive pressure of her hand, as I was about to unfasten her brooch and open her dress to give her air.

"No, Martin," she whispered, "I shall be better in a moment."