ing of an intimate friend? Answer me honestly: can you bring
yourself to do that, after what happened at Mr. Benjamin's house?"

I had told her of my last interview with Miserrimus Dexter, in
the natural confidence that she inspired in me as relative and
fellow-traveler; and this was the use to which she turned her
information! I suppose I had no right to blame her; I suppose the motive
sanctioned everything. At any rate, I had no choice but to give offense
or to give an answer. I gave it. I acknowledged that I could never
again permit Miserrimus Dexter to treat me on terms of familiarity as a
trusted and intimate friend.

Mrs. Macallan pitilessly pressed the advantage that she had won.

"Very well," she said, "that resource being no longer open to you, what
hope is left? Which way are you to turn next?"

There was no meeting those questions, in my present situation, by any
adequate reply. I felt strangely unlike myself--I submitted in silence.
Mrs. Macallan struck the last blow that completed her victory.

"My poor Eustace is weak and wayward," she said; "but he is not an
ungrateful man. My child, you have returned him good for evil--you have
proved how faithfully and how devotedly you love him, by suffering all
hardships and risking all dangers for his sake. Trust me, and trust
him! He cannot resist you. Let him see the dear face that he has been
dreaming of looking at him again with all the old love in it, and he is
yours once more, my daughter--yours for life." She rose and touched my
forehead with her lips; her voice sank to tones of tenderness which I
had never heard from her yet. "Say yes, Valeria," she whispered; "and be
dearer to me and dearer to him than ever!"

My heart sided with her. My energies were worn out. No letter had
arrived from Mr. Playmore to guide and to encourage me. I had resisted
so long and so vainly; I had tried and suffered so much; I had met with
such cruel disasters and such reiterated disappointments--and he was in
the room beneath me, feebly finding his way back to consciousness and
to life--how could I resist? It was all over. In saying Yes (if Eustace
confirmed his mother's confidence in him), I was saying adieu to the
one cherished ambition, the one dear and noble hope of my life. I knew
it--and I said Yes.

And so good-by to the grand struggle! And so welcome to the new
resignation which owned that I had failed.

My mother-in-law and I slept together under the only shelter t