mean all I said--it's this horrid asthma.'

'Oh, I can bear anything but to be told I neglect you--and when I stop up
watching you three nights running----'

These little quarrels were of constant occurrence. Irritable by nature, and
rendered doubly so by the character of his complaint, the invalid at times
found it impossible to restrain his ill-humour; but he was not entirely
bad; he inherited a touch of kind-heartedness from his mother, and being
now moved by Kate's tears, he said:

'That's quite true, and I'm sorry for what I said; you are a good little
nurse. I won't scold you again. Make it up.'

Kate found it hard to forget merely because Ralph desired it, and for some
time she refused to listen to his expostulations, and walked about the room
crying, but her anger could not long resist the dead weight of sleep that
was oppressing her, and eventually she came and sat down in her own place
by him. The next step to reconciliation was more easy. Kate was not
vindictive, although quicktempered, and at last, amid some hysterical
sobbing, peace was restored. Ralph began to speak of his asthma again,
telling how he had fancied he was going to die, and when she expressed her
fear and regret he hastened to assure her that no one ever died of asthma,
that a man might live fifty, sixty, or seventy years, suffering all the
while from the complaint; and he rambled on until words and ideas together
failed him, and he fell asleep. With a sigh of relief Kate rose to her
feet, and seeing that he was settled for the night, she turned to leave
him, and passed into her room with a slow and dragging movement; but the
place had a look so cold and unrestful that it pierced through even her
sense of weariness, and she stood urging her tired brains to think of what