act which told him when
to stop, and perhaps at this time Mademoiselle's superciliousness made
him subside the more quickly. After Monsieur de St. Gre had explained to
me the horrors of the indigo pest and the futility of sugar raising, he
turned to his daughter.

"'Toinette, where is Madame Clive?" he asked. The girl looked up,
startled into life and interest at once.

"Oh, papa," she cried in French, "we are so worried about her, mamma and
I. It was the day you went away, the day these gentlemen came, that we
thought she would take an airing. And suddenly she became worse."

Monsieur de St. Gre turned with concern to his wife.

"I do not know what it is, Philippe," said that lady; "it seems to be
mental. The loss of her husband weighs upon her, poor lady. But this is
worse than ever, and she will lie for hours with her face turned to the
wall, and not even Antoinette can arouse her."

"I have always been able to comfort her before," said Antoinette, with a
catch in her voice.

I took little account of what was said after that, my only notion being
to think the problem out for myself, and alone. As I was going to my
room Nick stopped me.

"Come into the garden, Davy," he said.

"When I have had my siesta," I answered.

"When you have had your siesta!" he cried; "since when did you begin to
indulge in siestas?"

"To-day," I replied, and left him staring after me.

I reached my room, bolted the door, and lay down on my back to think.
Little was needed to convince me now that Mrs. Clive was Mrs. Temple,
and thus the lady's relapse when she heard that her son was in the house
was accounted for. Instead of forming a plan, my thoughts drifted from
that into pity for her, and my memory ran back many years to the text
of good Mr. Mason's sermon, "I have refined thee, but not with silver,
I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction." What must Sarah Temple
have suffered since those days! I remembered her in her prime, in her
beauty, in her selfishness, in her cruelty to those whom she might have
helped, and I wondered the more at the change which must have come over
the woman that she had won the affections of this family, that she had
gained the untiring devotion of Mademoiselle Antoinette. Her wit might
not account for it, for that had been cruel. And something of the agony
of the woman's soul as she lay in torment, facing the wall, thinking
of her son under the same roof, of a life misspent and irrevocable,