risis in Mrs. Fullerton's condition. This illness has been incubating
for years. She must have undergone mental misery of a very acute kind,
whether or not the cause may have been adequate. If her children desire
to keep her among them, it will be necessary to treat her with the
utmost care, and to oppose her in _nothing_. Further disappointment or
chagrin, she has no longer the power to stand. There are complications.
Her heart will give trouble, and all your vigilance and forbearance are
called for, to avoid serious consequences. I think it right to speak
frankly, for everything depends--and always hereafter will depend--on
the patient's being saved as much as possible from the repetition of any
former annoyance or sorrow. At best, there will be much for her to
endure; I dread an uprooting of long familiar habits for any one of her
age. Her life, if not her reason, are in her children's hands."

A time of terrible anxiety followed, for the inmates of the Red House.
The doctor insisted on a trained nurse. Algitha and Hadria felt uneasy
when they were away, even for a moment, from the sick-room, but the
doctor reminded them of the necessity, for the patient's sake as well as
their own, of keeping up their strength. He warned them that there would
be a long strain upon them, and that any lack of common sense, as
regards their own health, would certainly diminish the patient's chances
of recovery. Nobody had his clearest judgment and his quickest
observation at command, when nervously exhausted. Everything might
depend on a moment's decision, a moment's swiftness of insight. The
warning was not thrown away, but both sisters found the incessant
precautions trying.

Every thought, every emotion was swallowed up in the one awful anxiety.

"Oh, Hadria, I feel as if this were my fault," cried Algitha, on one
still, ominous night, after she had resigned her post at the bedside to
the nurse, who was to fill it for a couple of hours, after which Hadria
took her turn of watching.

"You? It was I," said Hadria, with trembling lips.

"Mother has never been strong," Algitha went on. "And my leaving home
was the beginning of all this trouble."

"And _my_ leaving home the end of it," her sister added.

Algitha was walking restlessly to and fro.

"And I went to Dunaghee so often, so often," she cried tearfully, "so
that mother should not feel deserted, and you too came, and the boys
when they could. But she never got over my lea