Having coolly laid her plans for leaving the two to enjoy themselves, Lisbeth retired upon her laurels, with the intention of finding amusements of her own. She had entertained herself before, easily enough, why not again? Naturally, as they had fallen in love with each other, they would not want her; even Georgie would not want her. And it was quite natural that they should have fallen in love. They were the sort of people to do it. And Georgie would make a charming wife, and, if her husband proved a tyrant, would still go down upon her knees and adore him, and thank Heaven for her prince’s affection, and his perfections, to the end of her innocent days. As for herself, it was no business of hers, when she had done her duty toward her friend. The best thing she could do, would be to leave them alone, and she left them alone, and gave them every opportunity to be lover-like, if they had chosen.

But one day, Miss Clarissa, looking up from 142 her sewing, started, quite nervously, at the sudden impression made upon her of something new in her dear Lisbeth’s appearance.

“My dear Lisbeth!” she exclaimed, “how pale and ill you look!”

“I am always pale,” said Lisbeth.

“But, my love,” protested Miss Clarissa, “you are pale, to-day, in a different way. You must be suffering. Dear! dear! How careless in us not to have remarked it before! I almost believe—nay, indeed, I am sure—that you look thin, actually thin!”

“I am always thin,” said Lisbeth.

But Miss Clarissa was not to be consoled by any such coolness of manner. When she looked again more closely, she was quite sure that she was right, that her dear Lisbeth showed unmistakable signs of being in a dreadful state of health. She fell into a positive condition of tremor and remorse. She had been neglected; they had been heartlessly careless, not to see before that she was not strong. It must be attended to at once. And really, if Lisbeth had not been very decided, it is not at all unlikely that she would have been put to bed, and dosed, and wept over by all three spinsters at once.

“I hope it is not that Pen’yllan does not 143 agree with you,” faltered Miss Hetty. “We always thought the air very fresh and bracing, but you certainly do not look like yourself, Lisbeth.”

And the truth was that she did not look like herself. Much as she might protest against the assertion, she was thinner and paler than usual.

“I am not ill,” she said, “whether I look ill or not. I never was better in my life. I have not slept very well of late; that is all. And I must beg you to let me have my own way about it, Aunt Clarissa. It is all nonsense. Don’t fuss over me, I implore you. You will spoil Georgie’s love story for her, and make Mr. Anstruthers uncomfortable. Men hate fuss of any kind. Leave me alone, when they are in the house, and I will take all the medicine you choose to give me in private, though it is all nonsense, I assure you.”

But was it nonsense? Alas! I must confess, though it is with extreme reluctance, that the time came when the invincible was beaten, and felt that she was. It was not nonsense.

One afternoon, after sitting at her bedroom window for an hour, persuading herself that she was reading, while Georgie and Anstruthers enjoyed a tête-à-tête in the garden below, she 144 suddenly closed her book, and, rising from her chair, began to dress to go out.

She was down stairs, and out upon the beach, in five minutes; and, once away from the house, she began to walk furiously. She looked neither to right nor left, as she went. She was not in the humor to have her attention distracted from her thoughts by any beauty of sea, or sky, or shore. She saw the yellow sand before her, and that was all. She reached the old trysting-place, among the rocks, before she stopped. Once there, she gave herself time to br............