they are so unfortunate as to occupy in any sense a
position involving a relation to two women at once. The relation may be
ever so rightful and honest to each woman; the women may be good women,
and in their right places; but the man will find himself perpetually
getting into most unexpected hot water, as many a man could testify
pathetically, if he were called upon.

Mrs. White had been watching her son through the whole of his conversation
with Mercy. She could see only dimly at such a distance; but she had
discerned that it was a woman with whom he stood talking so long. It was
nearly half an hour past supper-time, and supper was Mrs. White's one
festivity in the course of the day. Their breakfast and their mid-day
dinner were too hurried meals for enjoyment, because Stephen was obliged
to make haste to the office; but with supper there was nothing to
interfere. Stephen's work for the day was done: he took great pains to
tell her at this time every thing which he had seen or heard which could
give her the least amusement. She looked forward all through her long
lonely days to the evenings, as a child looks forward to Saturday
afternoons. Like all invalids whose life has been forced into grooves, she
was impatient and unreasonable when anybody or any thing interfered with
her routine. A five minutes' delay was to her a serious annoyance, and
demanded an accurate explanation. Stephen so thoroughly understood this
exactingness on her part that he adjusted his life to it, as a
conscientious school-boy adjusts his to bells and signals, and never
trespassed knowingly. If he had dreamed that it was past tea-time, on this
unlucky night, he would never have thought of asking Mercy to go in and
see his mother. But he did not; and it was with a bright and eager face
that he threw open the door, and said in the most cordial tone,--

"Mother, I have brought Mrs. Philbrick to see you."

"How do you do, Mrs. Philbrick?" was the rejoinder, in a tone and with a
look so chilling that poor Mercy's heart sank within her. She had all
along had an ideal in her own mind of the invalid old lady, Mr. White's
mother, to whom she was to be very good, and who was to be her mother's
companion. She pictured her as her own mother would be, a good deal older
and feebler, in a gentle, receptive, patient old age. Of so repellent,
aggressive, unlovely an old woman as this she had had no conception. It
would be hard to do justice in words to Mrs. Wh