used you very ill."

"I believe she did," said her mother, "but I was sure you would do
right; you say he is better? Let me hear."

"Much better; only--. But Mary, you look quite worn out, you should go
to bed."

"Let me hear about him first."

Aunt Geoffrey accordingly told the whole history, as, perhaps, every one
would not have told it, for one portion of it in some degree justified
Henrietta's opinion that she had been doing a great deal on her own
responsibility. It had been very difficult to stop the bleeding, and
Fred, already very weak, had been so faint and exhausted that she had
felt considerable alarm, and was much rejoiced by the arrival of Philip
Carey, who had not been at home when the messenger reached his house.
Now, however, all was well; he had fully approved all that she had done,
and, although she did not repeat this to Mrs. Frederick Langford,
had pronounced that her promptitude and energy had probably saved the
patient's life. Fred, greatly relieved, had fallen asleep, and she had
now come, with almost an equal sense of relief, to tell his mother all
that had passed, and ask her pardon.

"Nay, Beatrice, what do you mean by that? Is it not what you and
Geoffrey have always done to treat him as your own son instead of mine?
and is it not almost my chief happiness to feel assured that you always
will do so? You know that is the reason I never thank you."

Henrietta hung her head, and felt that she had been very unjust and
ungrateful, more especially when her aunt said, "You thought it very
hard to have your mouth stopped, Henrietta, my dear, and I was sorry for
it, but I had not much time to be polite."

"I am sorry I was in the way," said she, an acknowledgment such as she
had seldom made.

Fred awoke the next morning much better, though greatly fallen back in
his progress towards recovery, but his mother had during the night the
worst fit of spasms from which she had ever suffered.

But Henrietta thought it all so well accounted for by all the agitations
of the evening before, that there was no reason for further anxiety.

It was a comfort to Aunt Geoffrey, who took it rather more seriously,
that she received that morning a letter from her husband, concluding,

"As to the Queen Bee, I have no doubt that you can judge of her frame
better from the tone of her letters than from anything I have to tell.
I think her essentially improved and improving, and you will think I
do not speak witho