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THRBBWOMBN ANDA MYSTERY.
By ANNA KATHARINE GRIEEN,
Author :2)’ " 27:2 Leavenworaz
CHAPTER I.
A WANDERING SPIRIT.
VMY patient lay slumbering. ‘A lovely
‘ girl, whose face I had been studying for
a half hour, in the vain hope of reading
the secret which hindered the .recovery,
that her naturally fine physique and the
apparently joyous circumstances of her
life,’ gave us every right, not only to an-
ticipate, but to expect. lVhy did she halt
just on the confines of health? Why did
< all medicines fail to exert their usual
power in hericase, when the case itself
did not present, at’ least from a nprse’s
or even "a physieian’s ‘standpoint, any un-
usual difiicultiesi I had been installed
..here to find out, and I was not finding
- out. I knew no more now what ailed this
sweet young creature, idolized by an ador-
ing father and watched over by an anxious
and indefatigable lover,‘than I'did the
first day I looked upon her wistful, suffer-
ing face. She had not talked. She was
not too‘ ill to enter into conversation, but
she had no wish to speak, except in short
“Thank you’s!” and weary plaints .for
water or some other soothing draught.
But her fingers clung to mine when I
grasped them, and at'times Iwould catch
the glimpse of a great appeal in her soft
eyes as I bent to arrange her pillows or
give her her medicine. At which sign of
"a heart.craving for sympathy, my spirit
would leap with anticipation of ‘what she
might say, and I would give her all the
encouragement of look and touch which
Case," “Agatha Webb,” “Hand and Ring,” “-Without Oodicil,”
Two Men and a Question,” L‘tc., Etc.
nothing ever came of it. She remained
report totgive the doctor when he came,
or any encouraging reply to bestow upon
night and agonizedly asked if she had
opened her heart or given me any clue to
themisery which was secretly devouring
her. - . ' .
For he, as well as all who came near
grief lay at the root of her malady. She
could disguise much, but not that; yet
her life, or what was known of her life,
even by him who had nourished her from
childhood, supplied no clue to any corrode
ing distress or secret difliculty which could
explain her present suffering.
On the contrary, her lot had always
happier. If thesecret lay, as I had at
her contemplated match with the fine and
prosperous‘ gentleman she was ‘engaged
to, certainly the persistence with’ which
she laid his portrait under her check at
night, offered small evidence of any such
her opinion of the young man himself,
whose reputation so far as I knew was of
the. highest. It was all a mystery, but
one I was determined to solve, if only be-
cause I loved her and had set my heart
upon saving her. ”
She was sleeping thenifhnd I was watch-
my position as her nurse warranted ; but
silent and wistful, and I had no favorable >
her father when he crept to the door at
her, knew that some dreadful fear or inner ‘
been a happy one, and in promise was still ‘
first thought, in some sudden aversion to.
change in her feelings, or of any change in .
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. K