mechanically, look at it, and lay it down again.
In the agony of my suspense I yet observed her smallest movement.

'And in what capacity am I to undertake this expedition?' said she at
length, in the same quiet tone, that soul-quelling tone she always
adopted when her passion was at white-heat. 'Is it in the capacity of
your father's wife executing his wishes about the amulet? Or is it as
the friend, protectress, and guardian of Miss Wynne?'

She sat down again by my bedside, and communed with
herself--sometimes fixing an abstracted gaze upon me, sometimes
looking across me at the very spot where in the shadow beside my bed
I bad seemed to see the words of the Psalmist's curse written in
letters of fire. At last she said quietly, 'Henry, I will undertake
this commission of yours.'

'Dear mother!' I exclaimed in my delight. 'I will undertake it,'
pursued my mother in the same quiet tone, 'on one condition.'

'Any condition in the world, mother. There is nothing I will not do,
nothing I will not sacrifice or suffer, if you will only aid me in
saving this poor girl. Name your condition, mother; you can name
nothing I will not comply with.'

'I am not so sure of that, Henry. Let me be quite frank with you. I
do not wish to entrap you into making an engagement you cannot keep.
You have corroborated to-night what I half suspected when I saw you
talking to the girl in the churchyard; there is a very vigorous
flirtation going on between you and this wretched man's daughter.'

'Flirtation? 'I said, and the incongruity of the word as applied to
such a passion as mine did not vex or wound me; it made me smile.

'Well, for her sake, I hope it is nothing more,' said my mother. 'In
view of the impassable gulf between her and you, I do for her sake
sincerely hope that it is nothing more than a flirtation.'

'Pardon me, mother,' I said, 'it was the word "flirtation" that made
me smile.'

'We will not haggle about words, Henry; give it what name may please
you, it is all the same to me. But flirtations of this kind will
sometimes grow serious, as the case of Percy Aylwin and the Gypsy
girl shows. Now, Henry, I do not accuse you of entertaining the mad
idea of really marrying this girl, though such things, as you know,
have been in our family. But you are my only son, and I do love you,
Henry, whatever may be your opinion on that point; and, because I
love you, I would rather, far rather, be a lonely, childless woman in
the w