been! and Hope Mills was quite driven
out of his mind.

He found his mother frightened and hysterical; and drawing her down
beside him he told her the story of his wanderings, expressing with some
tender kisses his sorrow for her alarm, and advised her to go to bed at
once, as he meant to do. And, though it might not be romantic after such
an adventure, I must admit that in ten minutes my hero was soundly
asleep, oblivious of both storm and business.

At the house he had left, there was but little refreshing rest. Mrs.
Lawrence drowsed away when the confusion of re-arrangement had subsided.
The gentlemen retired to the library while Martha disrobed her young
mistress with inward fear and trembling, hardly being able to judge
what was due to delirium, and what to natural imperiousness. Then Dr.
Maverick kindly dismissed her.

"You will need your strength in the morning," said he. "Try to get at
least one good nap."

He took his station at the bedside, and motioned Fred to an armchair
just out of his sister's range. The opiate was not working successfully,
but at present he did not consider it wise to increase it. He questioned
him a little as to Miss Irene's habits and resources, and imagined the
part withheld, from that rather reluctantly admitted. He understood that
here kindred blood had not produced harmony, but a horrible discord, the
more wearing in that every note had been muffled. The self-commiseration
of the mother, and her weak love for her son that could only pity, but
never encourage or brace to any vigorous effort; her total inability to
comprehend any such character as her youngest daughter possessed; the
wearisome platitudes enunciated in the belief that they were golden
grains of worldly wisdom, the only kind she supposed existed; the weak,
vapid repining that she had not married when she might have done so
well, the discouraging certainty that no marriage was possible in this
second-rate town, and that to remain single was a stigma and a
misfortune. In her weak but querulous complaints, which she meant in
part for sympathy, she had worn and exasperated Irene as much as Mrs.
Minor: only here there were no lovers, and there Mrs. Minor looked upon
every single man of means as a fish to be skilfully angled for.

If Irene had been thrown completely upon her own resources, if she had
been compelled to step entirely out of her olden sphere, and earn her
daily bread, there would have been a sharp, bitter f