from the mania of self-starvation. For some months longer she lived in
comfort and good cheer. This clear memory of her youth was oddly
interwoven with the forgetful dulness of old age, like a golden thread
in a black web, like a tiny flame on the hearth that shoots with
intermittent brilliancy into darkness. She was always to see her lover
upon the morrow; she never woke to the fact that 'to-day' lasted too
long, that a winter of morrows had slipped fruitless by.

The interviews between Jeanie Trim and Kinnaird were not monotonous. All
else was monotonous. December, January, February passed away. The
mornings and the evenings brought no change outwardly in the sick-room,
no change to the appearance of the fine old face and still stately
figure, suggested no variety of thought or emotion to the lady's
decaying faculties; but at the hours when she sat and contentedly ate
the food that the maid brought her, her mental vision cleared as it
focused upon the thought of her heart's darling. It was she whose
questions suggested nearly all the variations in the game of imagination
which the young woman so aptly played.

'Was he riding his black mare, Jeanie Trim?'

'I didna see the beast. He stood on his feet when he was tapping at the
door.'

'Whisht! Ye could tell if he wore his boots and spurs, an' his drab
waistcoat, buttoned high?'

'Now that ye speak of it, those were the very things he wore.'

'It'd be the black mare he was riding, nae doubt; he'll have tied her to