And in his agony and answer, the woman seemed instinctively to know all; for after a pause she said "Doctor Riversdale says, sir, it's more fever than cholera, and so there might be hopes if-"

66

If what? Oh, speak out."

"If her system wasn't so low-but she can't stand the shock. I saw two children of mine die at Varna-die when the blue cholera mist rose like a tide about the tent-pegs, and I saw my poor Tom die here, after his leg were ampertated, and-and," she continued, bursting into tears, "I knows a look when I sees it in the eye now, and I see it here-so she can't last long, poor thing!"

"How long has she been thus?" asked Cyril, in a choking voice. "Some hours, sir."

"And before that?"

"She was as calm as a lamb, sir, wishing for a clergyman, and expressing fears that a Captain Wedderburn—you, I suppose, sir-might visit her, and catch the infection."

And this was his Mary-his plighted wife-she whose nature was so full of those charms which are more attractive than the most brilliant or classic beauty-such winning and pretty ways! Oh how, as he knelt by that wretched bedside, and sought Eo capture and keep the quick small hand that eluded or repelled him, while her eyes sparkled dangerously-through the mists of the past and horror of the present, memory went back o many a happy, happy day, and to episodes all gone for ever now!

She was raving by turns of her father, of her dead brother Harry, of Cyril himself and his reproachful heart seemed to leed as he heard her-of little Mrs. Primer, of the Alderman London, of the prison, and of a host of persons and places hose names bewildered him; then starting into a sitting osition she pressed her hands on her temples, threw back her air, and with eyeballs starting from their sockets, uttered a iercing shriek, as she sprang into an imaginary river, and then Ꭹ back calm and still, with her arms by her side as the fancied aters closed over her head.

"Please Captain Wedderburn, do leave us for a little, and hen she is a little more composed and sensible, I'll fetch ou;" and the female nurse half led him out into the Divan anée, which is the central hall of every great Turkish house, ad off which all the other rooms open. She closed the dooropped the curtain we should rather say-and Cyril wearily,

das one in a nightmare seated himself on the divon or

WAS it the vision of a distempered brain, he asked of himself strange and fantastic Turkish hall (through which the sun fell in golden flakes from a double row of upper and l windows of square form), with all its green and gold arabes and pious sentences from the koran traced round on sc beneath the cornices; was it not like some scene he had nessed in a theatre, that line of twisted columns and horsearches dividing the room, beyond which he saw a marble f tain playing, and places like pigeon-holes holding vases beautiful jars, once filled with cool water, sherbet or flow And could it be possible that Mary Lennox-she whom he to meet in the old pine thicket, whose cheek had so o reposed on his shoulder by the lonely stile in the glen, lying there on a wretched straw pallet, amid such strange foreign surroundings, and at the point of-death? So he sa a kind of stupor, gazing at a group of the Turkish guard sea drowsily under a sunshade, smoking and listening to the civious story of a dervish, whom they would reward wit para or two.

Anon the nurse came, and told him in a whisper that " was asleep," and he blessed God for it, in the fervent h that it might be the forerunner of returning health and streng and that the crisis might be past. So he went forth to soothe nerves by a stroll and a cigar, and in about two hours retur to find that Mary had been awake, and that a chaplain of Duke of Cambridge's division (whom the splinter of a shell 1 wounded) was with her; that she was quite calm, and prepar and wishing to die.

"But not to leave me !" he exclaimed with sorrowful proach, and he issued forth again, repassing the Osma sentinel, who thought he must be mad to grieve about a wom "Mashallah! a sick one too!"

In the yard he met Doctor Riversdale, and questioned hi but the old staff surgeon shook his head sorrowfully, and reply recalled to Cyril the convictions of the nurse.

There are two expressions in the human face, which wh we once see them, Wedderburn, we never forget-the first qui glance of love, and the last long look of death! I have been love in my day, like most men; and as a soldier have se many die on the field and in hospital; and I have seen dea in that girl's face, but blended with love too!"

66

How, Riversdale ?"

"When her lips uttered your name"

After a time, when he re-entered the Divan Hanée, the curtain veiling the door was lifted by the nurse, who beckoned him eagerly, and as he drew near, the woman, with good taste, withdrew, while Cyril, in a fresh burst of anguish, threw himself on his knees by Mary's side, striving, but in vain, to control his grief. She stretched out her thin hands towards him, and gave him a soft sad smile.

Oh, that glance! that too often furtive glance which all lovers know, and which is too subtle for description, has much of power; but it was not the glance that was now in the weird and pursuing eyes of Mary,-it was the earnest glance seen only in the eyes of the dying, but blended with much of sweetness. So Riversdale was right.

"I am dying, Cyril," said she, in a low voice; "I feel it in my heart."

"You-you, my Mary; oh, it cannot be !" he whispered with quivering lips and in a passion of tears.

"Yes, Cyril, my love, I can't last long now."

66

Oh! would that my wound had been mortal, and that I ad died before you, darling; we should then have been renited, never more to part. But God knows what is best for us.' "And blessed be His holy name, Cyril! Kiss me, darling, hile-while I can see you, and can feel my hand in yours. The sun has set very suddenly, surely-on the forehead, darling -on the forehead, not the lip-not the lip !"

66

Why, my Mary?"

"There may be death in such a kiss."

"Then welcome be the death!"

“Oh, Cyril !—husband of my heart!" she murmured. "My plighted wife-my Mary!"

66

"I am going to my poor papa," she said with childlike simicity. He clung, Cyril, to the fragment of his patrimony en as a gallant captain clings to the wreck of his ship, and

d.
"Yes, Mary; though rash, a true gentleman to the last.”
"And he loved me so-my poor papa!"

Then her mind began to wander a little again. Far away om Scutari, from where the hastily buried dead lay on the in without the walls,-from the wards of the horrid hospital r thoughts went as in a dream,-for so her mutterings showed ile her poor head rested on Cyril's neck,-back to Loneodlee, to the old grey tower, with its turrets and cape-house the stormy Border times; to the mossy stile and the thorn es; to the old Scottish firs, with their red stems, gnarled inches and bronze-like foliage cutting the clear blue sky; to

Lammermuirs, to the lonely pastoral hills, where the b faced wedders browsed and bleated; to places where the so rowan grew, and where the pink and white hawthorn lo the evening air with fragrance; and in the girl's heart waxed strong the desire to die-not among her kindred kindred had she none, but that she might die in her native and be laid among the graves where her forefathers lay, in Lennox-aisle of the old kirk at Willowdean. But fate willed it otherwise.

For an hour she lay with her head pillowed on Cyril's h and barely conscious of his presence. She was hovering on Borderland which lies between Time and Eternitymysterious frontier from whence the world, and all its inter must look very small indeed; smaller still its wrongs and sorrows; dim its doubts, its loves, and allurements. Aft time a shiver, that passed over all the delicate form; a sigh escaped her; and the fallen jaw, revealing all the pearlteeth, announced that all was over!

The light was fading as the sun shed its last red rays on Bosphorus, but Cyril lingered long with the dead in his ar and tenderly, and while his tears fell on them, he kissed white eyelids after he had closed them for ever, smoothing long dark lashes on the marble cheeks; and the widowed nu who was hovering without, could not restrain her tears wher peeping in she saw the handsome young officer on his knees his blood-stained and tattered uniform, engaged in prayer the humble pallet whereon the dead girl lay, looking in de purer and lovelier than ever.

By the hospital regulations all fever patients were bur immediately, to avoid the spread of infection, and so that ni saw the last scene of this tragedy.

Four soldiers-wounded Fusileers of Cyril's company, m selected by himself-bore her on their shoulders in a hasti made coffin to the cemetery without the walls, where lie many of our dead, the gallant, and in too many instanc perhaps, forgotten victims of the war and pest. The only p that covered her was a ship's union-jack; it had already serv for many in Scutari, and would serve for many more; and Cyr as he stood at the head of her grave, could see the full roun silver moon as it rose up in beauty from the sea of Marmor throwing far across the plain the shadows of the spectr like cypresses that overlook the vast Turkish "City of t Silent," the seven miles of tombs; and after the chaplain ha concluded the affecting burial service of the Church of Englan

not a sound was beard but the splash of cars in the Bosphoru

caïque that shot to and fro; or the prolonged howling of some houseless dog, the ever accursed of the prophet, prowling along the streets of Scutari.

It was the night of the 20th February; so the same moon that through a tempest of snow looked down on the capture of Horace Ramornie near the Tchernaya, saw his cousin acting in a very different scene in the great cemetery opposite Seraglio Point. For a time he sat on a tombstone close by, the picture of thought and grief, his hands clasped over the hilt of his sword, which was placed between his knees, and his chin resting on his hands, his eyes bent on vacancy. In the last hour or two he seemed to have become older, thinner, greyer, and more stern.

The chaplain kindly gave him his arm, and his four comrades urged him, in their own plain fashion, to be comforted, though they could not comprehend the cause of his grief; but then he was a favourite officer, and as they put on their caps and saluted him, ere withdrawing to their quarters in the convalescent portion of the hospital, they all in unison sympathized with Captain Wedderburn.

And there she lay alone in her grave upon the Asian shore, under the shadow of those giant cypresses, poor Mary Lennox, the last of that ilk of the Lonewoodlee. After all her miseries, it was a strange and wayward fate!

How bitterly and unavailingly now he repented of his past harshness, suspicions, and injustice to her who was gonebitterly too, for the time lost by their needless separation; for the false position in which she had so long been placed with his family through mistaken ideas of policy; and he felt in his heart, that surely we suffer our punishments on this earth, and not hereafter.

He had but one embodied thought ever present now-that he had found her in this strange land among Miss Nightingale's good Samaritans; that he had seen the face, again heard the Foice of Mary, and held her hand in his; and that never, never nore would that beloved face turn to his, and never more her voice fall on his ear! And she had been true to him, and had oved him to the last! He remembered her warning words of ear and love when he kissed her, and he was not without hope hat he might yet die and be laid by her side, for Mary seemed o lonely in her grave; but Cyril Wedderburn was not one of hose men who die easily.

Many a solitary hour he lingered by Mary's grave, as if he