rs. Yorke bore it well.
She suffered him to stay half the day there; she once suffered him to
sit up all night in the chamber; she rose herself at five o'clock of a
wet November morning, and with her own hands lit the kitchen fire, and
made the brothers a breakfast, and served it to them herself.
Majestically arrayed in a boundless flannel wrapper, a shawl, and her
nightcap, she sat and watched them eat, as complacently as a hen beholds
her chickens feed. Yet she gave the cook warning that day for venturing
to make and carry up to Mr. Moore a basin of sago-gruel; and the
housemaid lost her favour because, when Mr. Louis was departing, she
brought him his surtout aired from the kitchen, and, like a "forward
piece" as she was, helped him on with it, and accepted in return a
smile, a "Thank you, my girl," and a shilling. Two ladies called one
day, pale and anxious, and begged earnestly, humbly, to be allowed to
see Mr. Moore one instant. Mrs. Yorke hardened her heart, and sent them
packing--not without opprobrium.

But how was it when Hortense Moore came? Not so bad as might have been
expected. The whole family of the Moores really seemed to suit Mrs.
Yorke so as no other family had ever suited her. Hortense and she
possessed an exhaustless mutual theme of conversation in the corrupt
propensities of servants. Their views of this class were similar; they
watched them with the same suspicion, and judged them with the same
severity. Hortense, too, from the very first showed no manner of
jealousy of Mrs. Yorke's attentions to Robert--she let her keep the post
of nurse with little interference; and, for herself, found ceaseless
occupation in fidgeting about the house, holding the kitchen under
surveillance, reporting what passed there, and, in short, making herself
generally useful. Visitors they both of them agreed in excluding
sedulously from the sickroom. They held the young mill-owner captive,
and hardly let the air breathe or the sun shine on him.

Mr. MacTurk, the surgeon to whom Moore's case had been committed,
pronounced his wound of a dangerous, but, he trusted, not of a hopeless
character. At first he wished to place with him a nurse of his own
selection; but this neither Mrs. Yorke nor Hortense would hear of. They
promised faithful observance of directions. He was left, therefore, for
the present in their hands.

Doubtless they executed the trust to the best of their ability; but
something got wrong. The bandages