"That was taking rather a cheerful view of matters, for her ladyship," returned Lord Chesterton. "I suppose they do--I suppose they do."

Mr Wade probably thought that upon this matter his old friend would have quoted Shakespeare

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies,

But in battalions."

But he contented himself with sitting in silence and in gloom at the back of the family chariot, which rolled softly onwards to Wimpole Street. Having arrived there, he duly stopped at Mr Horton's modest house, and the coach took on its freightage to Queen Anne Street. The eccentric old gentleman who owned the mansion was not at home; and the eager, and intrusive housekeeper, who watched his outgoings and his incomings with so much anxious care, flew up to the street door when she heard the ponderous knock of the Chesterton footman waking up the echoes of the tall house and the quiet street.

"God bless the man!" she cried, "he will knock the house down. That comes of the old gentleman not allowing me to tie up the knocker with a black kid glove. He says it's unlucky. Not more unlucky than a white kid, I'm sure. One brings death and the other life-leastways, they shows as death or life have been visitin' the 'ouse. And which is luckier ? Says he, 'No one comes 'ere with their thunderin' knocks;' an' he's no sooner turned his back on the 'ouse, but here they is. Well, that's a fine chariot-too fine for the doctor. Besides, he's here."

This she said as she ducked on the landing to get what she called a "squint" through the windows at the side of the door. The footman announced the Earl in so subdued a way-as if conscious of having made by far too much noise-and that nobleman and Lady Winifred entered in so gentle a way, that the housekeeper was mollified, and set no bar to the entrance of the nobleman and the lady to the chamber of the sick woman.

"She was very ill," she said, in one of those dreadful whispers which echo so, and which seem to float about a sick house"very ill, indeed. The doctor was stoppin' with her some time this mornin'. He had brought a hinstrument with him."

There is something terribly vague and horrible about the word "instrument," when used in connection with an invalid. Poor Winifred shuddered as if it were a guillotine; but it was nothing half so dreadful. Dr Richards, eminently in advance of his medical brethren, had merely brought a galvanic battery ---a somewhat rude instrument compared with our finer pieces of mechanism, but one which was sufficient for his purpose. So it was, that when, full of dread and tremor, the Earl and Winifred crept up-stairs into the chamber of the sick, which lay at the back of Edgar Wade's study, they found the Sister of Charity slowly dropping her beads, and looking with wonder on the stout, earnest, rough-haired little doctor, who, with his battery on the table, was prepared to strike the spark. Two bent and twisted wires ran from the table to the hands and the head of the invalid, who-pale as death, her beautiful black hair streaming on her pillow, her hands white as paper and as thin as those of a skeleton-lay quite motionless on the bed.

"Stop a bit," whispered the doctor to Winifred, as she entered first. "Stop a bit "-he spoke as if he had known her for years. "Now, you are just in time to see a wonderful experiment—that is, if you have never seen it before. I could not have found a more beautiful subject." The doctor used "beautiful" as "fit." "There she is, neither alive nor dead; hasn't spoken for nearly a week. You see that wire round the back of her head? There's where I think we shall do good. But quite a chance. Never was such an excellent chance for proving Galvani's theory, that 'electricity is life.”

The Earl's heart beat violently, his head was bent down, as he entered the room of the dying woman. As he did so, the disc of the electric machine was whirled rapidly round, and a little sparkle fluttered, like a blue Psyche, for a moment on its edge. The invalid shuddered, and, with a slight start, spoke in a voice so low, so tremulous, and so plaintive, that from the eyes of Winifred and the Earl tears fell; while the Man of Science and the Woman of Religion looked on with stoical indifference, saving that Dr Richards' face seemed lit up with joy at the success of his experiment.

"O Philip !—my old love! I have waited long for this. You have come at last!"

"You see, the eyes don't open. She knows you, sir, evidently. That's hardly electricity-that's a more delicate and more subtle fluid yet, that touches her brain-that's the secret of that much-maligned physician, Dr Mesmer. Here, nursewine wine! Pour a glass of champagne down her throatdon't give her broth and slops-and we will save her yet!"

CHAPTER XLIII.

"Leonora. Sinful am I, but not compact of sin.
Though Satan charges me with many darts,
But one shall wound."

-Marion Colonna, act ii. sc. iii.

"WINE, wine!-we will save her yet!" cried the doctor. Heavens above us! what an anxiety and bustle, what a straining of hope and of nerve, what a motion and an eagerness, to save life-one life! As if at other times we were not as ready to throw away lives by the thousand! For the sake of science-rather, cynics might say (but cynics are such queer fellows!), for the sake of himself-the good Dr Richards was as eager in attempting to bolster up the fleeting existence of Mrs Wade as a man well could be who was hunting, let us say, or pursuing any object, fame or wealth, or ambition of any sort. The eager little man, putting his arm round the thin, wasted form of the invalid, lifted her up, made the religieuse arrange the pillows, and himself poured, slowly and carefully, some very old port down the throat of poor Eugenie. The good Sister dropped her beads when Eugenie spoke. She had been so long silent, that the nurse had grown accustomed to the dumb woman she attended to, and whose lips she wetted with brandy and water; and she had so quietly made her own soul in her constant prayers as she moved noiselessly about the room, that Mrs Wade was forgotten, save as some necessary piece of furniture. So in this world we become the property of each other. "I have said so many aves, so many credos. Let me seee-what must I do? Oh, I must attend to my invalid."

"My invalid!" Poor Eugenie had faded out of life, and

had not a holding even in herself. The wine seconded the effect of the electric fluid in a marvellous way. The most admirable and subtle spirit, alcohol-the most absurdly abused of all God's creations, the thing which sets free the true nature of man, and then is credited by the ungrateful creature with having caused the crimes which it gave him the courage to commit-coursed through the veins of Eugenie, and made her tremble into something like reanimation.

"It is wondrous, is it not," whispered the doctor to his onlooking friends, "that when one who has lived simply and purely, as this lady has, and who has no organic disease, some little action like that of electricity and alcohol will give her life? You see, it has a mechanical effect-it is like shaking a watch when a particle of dust stops it. And yet, if this lady had been under the hands of Dr Dash or Dr Blank, he would have drenched the life out of her with Physic!-Physic! Half a glass more, Sister," he said, after a pause; during which the lips of the patient opened, and the faintest of faint glows rose to her throat and cheeks.

"There-that will be enough. She wishes to speak, and the strength will come very soon."

So indeed it did. The poor lady trembled all over, with a delicate shudder; and then, with a smile that was far sadder than a tear, spoke

"Philip," she murmured—“ Philip, I know you are here. Speak to me-speak to me once more, as once you did!"

The Earl, sinking upon his knees at the foot of the bed, had been all the time a prey to such emotions of awe, of strong trouble, and remorse, as one may be supposed to feel when he witnesses one whom he has wronged and loved risen from the dead.

"Eugenie !" he answered.

Age, disappointment, the wear of the world, the wrongs of misprized love, were all forgotten; and the tones sounded as freshly as in youthful days, when they struck upon the dying woman's ears. As when the murmuring wind reaches an Æolian harp, and dies away upon the strings it renders eloquent with music, the same sad tone is caught by the hearts of those who listen-so the little company around the bed

seemed attuned to the nature of this sad shrift between the lovers. Nor did the wasted form of the one, and the bowed and whitened head of the other, serve to detract in any way from the freshness and reality of the love. For misfortune and the wintry cold of disappointment have this merit, that they seem to arrest one's existence at the very time it falls, and the lack of fruition thus prevents the increment of age. How many an old man is there who still remains in his heart as young as he was when that heart bent down, never to rise again, at the grave of his dead love? How many a woman lives-mature, but yet a girl in heart-who cherishes the feeling which she had when her love was lost at sea-never to be heard of more, but never to be forgotten? In some old books of household recipes, there is one which is said to arrest the development of a rosebud in midsummer, and to keep it fresh and green, so that, with careful tending and due warmth, it shall blossom in midwinter. The experiment is, perhaps, never successful, and hence the simile is the more true. The bud remains a bud, and never becomes a rose, but it withers in the form in which it is gathered; and so the human heart remains unchanged, except by the slow decay which, while it cheats with the promise of a future summer, keeps it with the semblance of youth, and visibly almost unaltered.

"Eugenie, my Eugenie!"

The remembered voice, the old, fond tones, swept like the dying wind the chords of the poor lady's heart, and brought with them the memories of old days, and of the cherished love. Her eyes were still closed, but all her senses seemed preternaturally acute. A smile of delight-radiant and bright, and pure as winter sunshine-lit up her features; and she spoke

"We were so happy," she said; "so young, and both so innocent. We lived but for each other, Philip; and you, in your fond passion, were as true as I. What was the world to us? What were its vanities, its empty pomp, its cruel, false ambitions? We lived but for each other; and every passing day, swift as it went when winged by joy and love, made us dearer to each other.

"We had no bargaining, no buying, nor cheating, no chaffering with our love; but gave ourselves to each other—a boy