be wrong,--if you should ever repent of this, it is not your happiness
alone, but mine, too, that will be destroyed."

Again their relative positions changed, and _remained so_ for a long
while.

"Ivy, am I a mere schoolboy to swear eternal fidelity for a week? Have
I not been tossing hither and thither on the world's tide ever since
you lay in your cradle, and do I not know my position and my power and
my habits and love? And knowing all this, do I not know that this dear
head"----etc., etc., etc., etc.

But I said I was not going to marry my man and woman, did I not? Nor
have I. To be sure, you may have detected premonitory symptoms, but I
said nothing about that. I only promised not to marry them, and I have
not married them.

It is to be hoped they were married, however. For, on a fine June
evening, the setting sun cast a mellow light through the silken
curtains of a pleasant chamber, where Ivy lay on a white couch, pale
and and still,--very pale and still and statuelike; and by her side,
bending over her, with looks of unutterable love, clasping her in his
arms, as if to give out of his own heart the life that had so nearly
ebbed from hers, pressing upon the closed eyes, the white cheeks, the
silent lips kisses of such warmth and tenderness as never thrilled
maidenly lips in their rosiest flush of beauty,--knelt Felix Clerron;
and when the tremulous life fluttered back again, when the blue eyes
slowly opened and smiled up into his with an answering love, his
happiness was complete.