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A DREADFUL TEMPTATION. 89
myself. It will, be. ready now in a minute. IsLora asleep?"
‘Lora is ill, mamma, Iwill finish the tea, and you must
go to her,” said Xenie, with a quiver in her low voice, as
she took the cloth from her mother’s hand. A
-** Lora sick?” said Mrs. Carroll. ‘* Well, Xenie, I rather
expected it. Iwill gotoher. Never mind about the tea,
dear,-unless you want some yourself.” .
. She bustled out, and. Xenie went on mechanically setting
the tea-things on the little round table, scarcely conscious
of what she was doing, so heavy was her heart.
She loved her sister with as fond a love as ever throbbed
in a sister’s breast and Lora’s peril roused her sympathies
to their highest pitch.
Finishing her simple task: at last, she filled a little china
cup with fragrant tea and carried it to tie patient’s room.
Mrs. Carroll had enveloped Lora in her snowy embroid-
‘ered night-robe, and she lay upon the bed looking very pale
and preternaturally calm to Xenie’s excited fancy.
_ She drank a little of the tea, then sent Xenie away
with it, telling her that she felt quite easy theri.
‘*Goand sit on the veranda as usual, my dear,” Mrs, Car-
roll said, kindly. ‘tI will sit with Lora myself.”
‘*You will call me if Iam necded?” asked Mrs. St. John,
hesitating on the threshold.
“Yes, dear.” :
So Xenie went away very sad and heavy-hearted, ‘as if
the burden of some intangible sorrow rested painfully upon
‘her oppressed and aching heart.
CHAPTER XIII.
XENIE sat down in the easy-chair on the veranda and
looked out at the mystical sea spread out before her gaze,
with the moon and stars mirrored in its restless bosom.
Everything was very still. No sound came to her ears
save the restless beat. of the waves upon the shore. Sne
leaned forward with her arms folded on the veranda rail,
and her chin in the hollow of one pink palm, gazing directly
forward with dark eyes full of heavy sadness and pain.
She was tired and depressed. Lora had been ill and rest-
less for many nights past, and Xenie and Mrs. Carroll had
kept alternate vigils by her sleepless couch.
The last night had been: Xenie’s turn, and now the
strange, narcotic influence of licr grief for Lora combmed
with physical weariness to weigh her eyelids down.
After an interval of anxious listening tor sounds from ‘the
sick-room, her heavy head dropped wearily on her foided
arms, and she fell asleep.
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