"Let me go to bed, auntie," said he, with a dry sob; "and I never want to get up again!"
Midnight was winding the world without in a white glimmer of misty moonlight, when the sharp beam of a taper smote Ray's sleepless eyes, and he saw Vivia at last standing before him. Over her wrapper clung the old shawl whose snowy web was sown with broidery of linnæa-bells, green vine and rosy blossom. Round her shoulders fell her shadowy hair. Through her slender fingers the redness of the flame played, and on her cheek a hectic coming and going like the broad beat and flush of an artery left it whiter than the spectral moonlight on the pane. She took away her hand, and let the illumination fall full upon his face,a face haggard as a dead man's.