CHAPTER XXVIII.

ONLY A DREAM.

Of all those who lived through the fever, poor Alick Corfield's case had been the most desperate while it lasted. Mr. Gryce, his fellow-sufferer, had been up and about his usual work, extracting Aryan roots and impaling Lepidoptera for a month and more, while Alick was still in bed among ice-bags and Condy's Fluid, and as bad as at the beginning—indeed, worse, having had a relapse which nothing but his wiry constitution, backed by his mother's scientific nursing, could have pulled him through. Gradually the danger passed, and this time his convalescence was solid, and, though slow, uninterrupted. He began to creep about the house by the aid of sticks and arms, and he came down stairs for the first time on the day when the Harrowbys and Birketts returned home; but he remained in strict quarantine, and Steel's Corner was scrupulously avoided by the neighbors as the local lazaretto which it would be sinful to invade. By all but Leam, who went daily to ask after the invalid, and to keep the mother company for exactly half an hour by the clock.

One day when she went on her usual errand Mrs. Corfield met her at the hall-door, "Alick will be glad to see you, my dear," she called out, radiant with happiness, as the girl crossed the threshold. "We are in the drawing-room to-day, as brisk and bonny as a bird: such a treat for him, poor dear!"

"I am glad," said Leam, who held a basket of early spring flowers in her hand. "Now you are happy."  Tears came into the poor mother's haggard eyes. "Happy, child! You do not know what I feel," she said with tremulous emotion. "Only a mother who has been so near to the loss of her dearest, so near to heartbreak and despair, as I have been, can know the blessed joy of the reprieve."

"How you love him!" said Leam in a half whisper. "I loved mamma like that."

"Yes, poor child! I remember," said Mrs. Corfield with compassion. She forgot that at the time she had thought the girl's love and despair, both the one and the other, exaggerated and morbid. She met her now on the platform of sympathy, and her mind saw what it brought to-day as it had seen what it had brought before, but she was not conscious of the contradiction.

"I thought I should have died too when she did. I wish I had," said Leam, looking up to the sky with dreamy love, as if she still thought to meet her mother's face in the blue depths.

"My poor dear! it was terrible for you," sighed the elder woman sympathetically. "But you must not always mourn, you know. There is a time for everything, even for forgetting, and for being happy after sorrow."

"Never a time for me to forget mamma, nor to be happy," said Leam.

"Why not?" answered Mrs. Corfield in her impatient way. "You are young, nice-looking, in tolerably good health, but you are black round your eyes to-day. You have friends: I am sure all of us, from my husband downward, think a great deal of you. And Alick has always been your friend. Why should you not be happy?"

Leam put the question by. "Yes, you have always been kind to me," she answered. "I remember when mamma died how you wanted to be kind then. But I did not understand you as I do now. And how good Alick was! How sorry I should have been if anything had happened to him now!" Her beautiful face grew tender with the thought. She did really love Alick in her girlish, sisterly way.

Mrs. Corfield looked at her. "Have you never loved any one else as you loved your poor mother?" she asked.

Leam lifted her eyes. "Never," she answered simply. "I have liked a few people since, but love as I loved mamma? No!"

"Leam, I am going to ask you a straightforward question, and you must give me a straightforward answer: Which do you like best, my boy or Edgar Harrowby?" Mrs. Corfield asked this suddenly, as if she wanted to surprise the girl's secret thought rather than have a deliberate answer.

"I like them differently," began Leam without affectation. "Alick is so unlike Major Harrowby in every way. And then I have known him so long—since I was a mere child. I feel that I can say what I like to him: I always did. But Major Harrowby is a stranger, and I am—I don't know: it is all different. I cannot say what I mean." She hesitated, stopped, grew pale, glanced aside and looked disturbed; then putting on her old air of cold pride, she drew herself a few paces away and said, "Why do you ask me such a question, Mrs. Corfield? You should not."

Mrs. Corfield sighed. If Edgar was undecided between his personal desires and conventional fitness, she was undecided between her longing to see Alick happy and her dislike to his being happy in any way but the one she should design for him. He had raved a good deal during his illness, and had said many mad things connected with Leam—always Leam; and since his convalescence his mother had seen clearly enough how his heart was toward her. His pleasure when he heard that she had been there, his childish delight in anything that she had brought for him, the feverishness with which he waited to hear her step, her voice from a distance, always demanding that the doors should be left open so that he might hear her,—all betrayed to his mother as plainly as confession would have done the real thoughts of his heart, and cast a trouble into her own whence she saw no present satisfactory issue. Though she was fond of  Leam now, and grateful to her for her faithful visits during Alick's illness, yet, just as Edgar doubted of her fitness as a wife for the master of the Hill, so did she doubt of her fitness as a daughter-in-law for Steel's Corner. As a friend she was pleasant enough, with her quaint ways and pretty face; but as one of the Corfield family, bound to them for ever —what then would she be? But again, if Alick really loved her, she would not like to see him disappointed. So, what between her dislike to the marriage should it ever be, and her fear for Alick's unhappiness should he ask and be refused, the poor mother was in a state of confused feelings and contradictory wishes which did not agree with a nature like hers, given to mathematical certainties and averse to loose ends and frayed edges anywhere. As nothing more was to be got out of Leam at this moment, and as Mrs. Corfield knew that Alick would be impatient, they went into the drawing-room together, Leam carrying her basket of spring flowers for her old friend.

It was pitiful to see the poor fellow. Thin, gaunt, plainer than ever, if also ennobled by that almost saintly dignity which is given by illness, the first impression made on Leam was one of acute physical repulsion: the second only gave room to compassion. Fortunately, that little shudder of hers was unnoticed, and Alick saw only the beloved face, more beautiful to him than anything out of heaven, with its grave intensity of look that seemed so full of thought and feeling, turned to him—saw only those glorious eyes fixed once more straight on his— felt only the small hand which seemed to give him new life to touch lying clasped in his own, weak, wasted, whitened, like a dead hand for color against the warm olive of her skin. It was almost worth while to have been separated so long to have this joy of meeting; and he thought his pain and danger not too dearly bought by this exquisite pleasure of knowing that she had pitied him and cared for him.

He raised himself from his pillows as he took her small, warm, fibrous hand, and his pallid face brightened into a tearful smile. "Ah!" he said, drawing a deep breath, "I am so glad to see you again!"

"I am glad to see you too," said Leam with a certain sudden embarrassment, she did not know why, but it came from something that she saw in his eyes and could not explain even to herself.

"Are you?" He pressed her hand, which he still held. "It does me good to hear you say so," he replied.

"I have brought you some flowers," then said Leam, a little coldly, drawing away her hand, which she hated to have either held or pressed.

He took them with a pleased smile. "Our pretty wild-flowers!" he said gratefully, burying his face in them, so cool and fresh and fragrant as they were. "They are like the giver," he added after a pause, "only not so sweet."

"Do you remember when I persisted to you there were no wild-flowers in England?" asked Leam, wishing that Alick would not pay her compliments.

"Do I remember? That was the first time I saw you," cried Alick. "Of what else have I thought ever since?"

"You like wild-flowers and celandine, do you not?" asked poor Leam, desperately disturbed. "I found them in the wood as I came here."

"And picked them for me?—up in the corner there by Barton's? I know. And you went up the lane for them—for me?" he repeated.

"Yes," said Leam.

"For me?" he asked again.

"Why, yes: for whom else could it have been?" answered Leam in the tone of grave rebuke he knew so well—the tone which always expressed, "You are stupid."

Alick's lip quivered. "You are so good," he said.

"Am I?" asked Leam seriously.

Then something passed over her face, a kind of gray shadow of remembrance, and she dropped her eyes. Was she good? and could he think so?

A silence fell between them, and each knew of what the other was thinking; then Leam said suddenly, to break that terrible silence, which she felt was more betraying than even speech would have been, "I am sorry you have been so ill. How dreadfully ill you have been!"

"Yes," he said, "I have been bad enough, I believe, but by God's grace I have been spared."

"It would have been more grace not to have let you get ill in the beginning," said Leam gravely.

Alick looked distressed. Should he never Christianize this pagan? "Don't say that, dear," he remonstrated. "We must not call in question His will."

"Things are things," said Leam with her quiet positiveness. "If they are bad, they are bad, whoever sends them."

"No. God cannot send us evil," cried Alick.

"Then He does not send us disease or sorrow," answered Leam. "If He does, it is silly to say they are good, or that He is kind to make us ill and wretched. I cannot tell stories. And all you people do."

"Leam, you pain me so much when you talk like this. It is bad, dear—impious and unchristian. Ah! can I never bring you to the true way?" he cried with real pain.

"You cannot make me tell stories or talk nonsense because you say it is religious," replied Leam, impervious and unconvinced. "I like better to tell the truth and call things by their right names."

"And you cannot feel that we are little children walking in the dark and that we must accept by faith?" said Alick.

She shook her head, then answered with a certain tone of triumph in her voice, "Well, yes, it is the dark: so let it be the dark, and do not pretend you understand when you do not. Do not say God made you ill in one breath, and in another that He is kind. It is silly."

"Now, my boy, don't excite yourself," said Mrs. Corfield, bustling into the room and noting how the thin cheek had flushed and how bright and feverish the hollow eyes of her invalid were looking. "You know the doctor says you are not to be excited or tired. It is the worst thing in the world for you."

"I am neither, mother: don't alarm yourself," he answered; "but I must have a little talk with Leam. I have not seen her for so long. How long is it, mother?"

"Well, my dear, you have been ill for over ten weeks," she said as she went to the window with a sudden gasp.

"Ten weeks gone out of my life!" he replied.

"We have all been sorry," said Leam a little vaguely.

His eyes grew moist. He was weak and easily moved. "Were you very sorry?" he asked.

"Very," she answered, for her quite warmly.

"Then you did not want me to die?" He said this with a yearning look, raising himself again on his elbow to meet her eyes more straightly.

"Want you to die?" she repeated in astonishment. "Why should I want you to die? I want you to get well and live."

He took her hand again. "God bless you!" he said, and turned his face to the pillow to conceal that he was weeping.

Again that gray look of remembrance, passed over her face. She knew now what he had meant. "No," she said slowly, "I do not want you to die. You are good, and would harm no one."

After this visit Leam saw Alick whenever she called at the house, which, however, was not so often as heretofore, and week by week became still more seldom. Something was growing up in her heart against him that made his presence a discomfort. It was not fear nor moral dislike, but it was a personal distaste that threatened to become unconquerable. She hated to be with him; hated to see his face looking at her with such yearning tenderness as abashed her somehow and made her lower her eyes; hated his endeavors to convert her to an orthodox acceptance of mysteries she could not understand and of explanations she could not believe; hated his sadness, hated his joy: she only wished that he would go away and leave her alone. What did he mean? What did he want? He was changing from the blushing, awkward, subservient dog of his early youth, and from the still subservient if also more argumentative pastor of these later days alike, and she did not like the new Alick who was gradually creeping into the place of the old.

When Mrs. Corfield spoke of taking him to the sea for change of air, her heart bounded as if a weight had been suddenly removed, and she said, "Yes, he ought to go," so warmly that the mother was surprised, wondering if she cared so much for him that the idea of his getting good elated her beyond herself and made her forget her usual reserve. She instinctively contrived not to see him alone now when she went to Steel's Corner during his tedious convalescence, for the poor fellow mended but slowly, if surely. Either she had only a short time to stay, and so stood for a moment, making serious talk impossible, or she took little Fina with her, or maybe she entangled Mrs. Corfield in the conversation so that she should not leave them alone, the vague fear and distaste possessing her making her strangely rusée and on the alert. But one day she was caught. It had to come, and it was only a question of time. She knew that, as we know when our doom is upon us.

Leam had not intended to go in to-day, but Alick, who was in the garden rejoicing in the warmth and freshness of this tender April noontide, came to meet her at the second gate, and asked her to come and sit with him on the garden-seat, there where the budding lilacs began to show their bloom, and there where they sat on that fatal day when she had hidden the little phial in her hair and bade him tell her of flowers till she tired.

She hesitated, and was on the point of refusing, when he took her by the upper part of her arm as if to hold her. "Do," he pleaded. "I want to say something to you."

"I have no time to stay," she answered, shrinking from his touch.

"Yes, yes, time enough for all I have to say," he returned. "I beg you to come with me to-day, Leam—I beg it; and I do not often ask a favor of you."

There was something in his manner that seemed to compel Leam to consent in spite of herself. True, he besought, but also he seemed almost to command; and if he did not command, then his earnestness was so strong that she was forced to yield to it. Trembling, but with her proud little head held straight—wondering what was coming, and vaguely conscious that whatever it was it would be pain—Leam let him take her to the garden-seat where the budding lilacs spoke of springtime freshness and summer beauty. Alick was trembling too, but from excitement, not from fear. He had made up his mind now, and when he had once resolved he was not wavering. He would ask her to share his life, accept his love, and he would thus take on himself half the burden of her sin. This was how he felt it. If he married her, knowing all that he knew, he would make himself the partner of her crime, because he would accept her past like her present—like her future; and thus he would be equally guilty with her before God. But he would trust to prayer and the Supreme Mercy to save her and him. He would carry no merits of devotion as his own claim, but he would have freed her of half her guilt, and he would be content to bear his own portion of punishment for this unfathomable gain. It was the man's love, but also the soul's passionate promise of sacrifice and redemption, that gave him boldness to plead, power to ask for a grace to which, had this deep stain of sin never tainted her, he would not have dared to aspire. But, as it was, his love was her greater safety, and what he gained in earthly joy he would lose in spiritual peace, while her partial forgiveness would be bought by the loss of his security of salvation. Not that she understood all this or ever should, but it gave him courage.

"When you first saw me, Leam, after my illness you said that you wanted me to live," he began in a low voice, husky with emotion. "Do you mean this?"

"Yes," she said, looking straight before her.

"Live for you?" he asked.

"For us all," she answered.

"No, not for us all—for you," he returned with insistence.

"That would be silly," said Leam quietly. "I am not the only person in the world: you have your mother."

"For my mother, perhaps; but for the world, nothing. You are the world to me," said Alick. "Give me your love, and I care for nothing else. Tell me you will be my wife, and I can live then—live as nothing else can make me. Leam, can you love me, dear? I have loved you from the first moment I saw you. Will you be my wife?"

"Your wife!" cried Leam with an involuntary gesture of repulsion. "You are dreaming."

"No, no: I am in full earnest. Tell me that you love me, Leam. Oh, I believe that you do. Surely I have not deceived myself so far. Why should you have come every day—every day, as you have done—if you do not love me? Yes, you do—I know you, do. Say so, Leam, my darling, my beloved, and put me out of my misery of suspense."

"You are my good friend: I love you like a friend; but a wife—that is different," faltered Leam.

"Yes, but it will come if you try," pleaded Alick, shifting his point from confidence to entreaty. "Won't you try to love me as I love you, Leam? Won't you try to love me as a wife loves her husband?"

She turned away. "I cannot," she answered in a low voice, yet firm and distinct. It was a voice in which even the most sanguine must have recognized the accent of hopeless certainty, inevitable despair.

"Leam, it will be your salvation," cried Alick, taking her hands. He meant her spiritual salvation, not her personal safety: it was a prayer, not a threat.

"You would not force me by anything you may know?" asked Leam in the same low, firm, distinct voice. "Not even for safety, Alick."

"Which I would buy with my own," he answered—"with my eternal salvation."

"I am not worthy of such love," said Leam trembling. "And oh, dear Alick, do not blame me, but I cannot return it," she added piteously.

She saw him start and heard him moan when she said this, but for a moment he was silent. He seemed half stunned as if by a heavy blow, but one that he was doing his best to bear. "Tell me so again, Leam. Let me be convinced," he then said with pathetic calmness, looking into her face. "You cannot love me?—never? never?"

"Never," she said, her voice breaking.

Alick covered his face in his hands, and she saw the tears trickle slowly through his fingers. He made no com-plaint, no protestation, only covered up his face and prayed, weeping, recognizing his fate.

She was sorry and heart-struck. She felt cruel, selfish, ungrateful, but for all that she could not yield nor say that she would marry him, trying to love him. Confused images of something dearer than this as the love of her life passed before her mind. They were images without recognizable form or tangible substance, but they were the true love, and this was not like them. No, she could not yield. Sorry as she might be for him, and was, she could not promise to marry him.

"Yes," he then said after a pause, lifting up his wan face, tear-stained and disordered, but making a sad attempt to smile—"yes, dear Leam, I was, as you say, dreaming. We shall always be friends, though—brother and sister, as we have been—to the end of our lives, shall we not?"

"Yes," was her answer, tears in her own eyes and a kind of wonder at her hardness running through her repugnance.

"Thank you, darling, thank you! If you want a friend, and I can be that friend and can serve you, you will come to me, will you not? You may want me some day, and you know that I shall not fail you. Don't you know that, my royal Leam?"

"I am sure of you," she half whispered, shuddering. To be in his power and to have rejected him! It all seemed very terrible and confused to Leam, to whom things complex and entangled were abhorrent.

"And now forget all this. I was only dreaming, dear. Why, no, of course you could not have married me—never could—never, never! I know that well enough now. You see I have been ill," nervously plucking at his hands, "and have had strange fancies, and I do not know myself or anything about me quite yet. But forget it all. It was only a sick fancy, and I thought what did not exist"

"I am sorry to have hurt you even in fancy," said Leam; giving a sigh of relief. "I do not like to see you unhappy, Alick. You are so-good to me."

"And to the end of my life I shall be what I have been," he said earnestly. "You can trust me, Leam."

"I am sorry I have hurt you," she said again, bending forward and looking up into his face. "But it was only a dream, was it not?" pleadingly.

He smiled pitifully, "Yes, dear, only a dream," he answered, turning away his head. After a while he took her hand and looked into her face, "And now it has passed," he said, calm that she should not be sorry.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]