and desire of money. "An hour hence will do as well," thought
Harry, and lapsed sulkily on to the bed again. No, he did not care
for Maria Esmond! No: he was ashamed of the way in which he had been
entrapped into that engagement. A wily and experienced woman, she had
cheated his boyish ardour. She had taken unfair advantage of him, as her
brother had at play. They were his own flesh and blood, and they ought
to have spared him. Instead, one and the other had made a prey of
him, and had used him for their selfish ends. He thought how they had
betrayed the rights of hospitality: how they had made a victim of the
young kinsman who came confiding within their gates. His heart was sore
wounded: his head sank back on his pillow: bitter tears wetted it.
"Had they come to Virginia," he thought, "I had given them a different
welcome!"

He was roused from this mood of despondency by Gumbo's grinning face at
his door, who said a lady was come to see Master Harry, and behind the
lad came the lady in the capuchin, of whom we have just made mention.
Harry sat up, pale and haggard, on his bed. The lady, with a sob, and
almost ere the servant-man withdrew, ran towards the young prisoner,
put her arms round his neck with real emotion and a maternal tenderness,
sobbed over his pale cheek and kissed it in the midst of plentiful
tears, and cried out--

"Oh, my Harry! Did I ever, ever think to see thee here?"

He started back, scared as it seemed at her presence, but she sank down
at the bedside, and seized his feverish hand, and embraced his knees.
She had a real regard and tenderness for him. The wretched place in
which she found him, his wretched look, filled her heart with a sincere
love and pity.

"I--I thought none of you would come!" said poor Harry, with a groan.

More tears, more kisses of the hot young hand, more clasps and pressure
with hers, were the lady's reply for a moment or two.

"Oh, my dear! my dear! I cannot bear to think of thee in misery," she
sobbed out.

Hardened though it might be, that heart was not all marble--that dreary
life not all desert. Harry's mother could not have been fonder, nor her
tones more tender than those of his kinswoman now kneeling at his feet.

"Some of the debts, I fear, were owing to my extravagance!" she said
(and this was true). "You bought trinkets and jewels in order to give me
pleasure. Oh, how I hate them now! I little thought I ever could! I have
brought them all with me, and