with
you till Tom is over the worst."

Then Letty clasped her hands in her old, beseeching way, and looked up
with a faint show of comfort.

"Be courageous, Letty," said Mary. "I shall be back as soon as ever I
can. God has sent me to you."

She drove straight home, and heard that Mrs. Redmain was annoyed that
she had gone out.

"I offered to dress her," said Jemima; "and she knows I can quite well;
but she would not get up till you came, and made me fetch her a book.
So there she is, a-waiting for you!"

"I am sorry," said Mary; "but I had to go, and she was fast asleep."

When she entered her room, Hesper gave her a cold glance over the top
of her novel, and went on with her reading. Mary proceeded to get her
things ready for dressing. But by this time she had got interested in
the story.

"I shall not get up yet," she said.

"Then, please, ma'am," replied Mary, "would you mind letting Jemima
dress you? I want to go out again, and should be glad if you could do
without me for some days. My friend's baby is dead, and both she and
her husband are very ill."

Hesper threw down her book, and her eyes flamed.

"What do you mean by using me so, Miss Marston?" she said.

"I am very sorry to put you to inconvenience," answered Mary; "but the
husband seems dying, and the wife is scarcely able to crawl."

"I have nothing to do with it," interrupted Hesper. "When you made it
necessary for me to part with my maid, you undertook to perform her
duties. I did not engage you as a sick-nurse for other people."

"'No, ma'am," replied Mary; "but this is an extreme case, and I can not
believe you will object to my going."

"I do object. How, pray, is the world to go on, if this kind of thing
be permitted! I may be going out to dinner, or to the opera to-night,
for anything you know, and who is there to dress me? No; on principle,
and for the sake of example, I will not let you go."

"I thought," said Mary, not a little disappointed in Hesper, "I did not
stand to you quite in the relation of an ordinary servant."

"Certainly you do not: I look for a little more devotion from you than
from a common, ungrateful creature who thinks only of herself. But you
are all alike."

More and more distressed to find one she had loved so long show herself
so selfish, Mary's indignation had almost got the better of her. But a
little heightening of her color was all the show it made.

"Indeed, it is quite necessary, ma'am," she pers