asion occurred; so that,
although Stephen received her affectionate epithets and caresses with
filial responsiveness, he was never in the slightest degree deluded by
them. He took them for what they were worth, and held himself no whit
freer from constraint, no whit less ready for the next storm. By the very
fact of the greater fineness of his organization, this tyrannical woman
held him chained. His submission to her would have seemed abject, if it
had not been based on a sentiment and grounded in a loyalty which
compelled respect. He had accepted this burden as the one great duty of
his life; and, whatever became of him, whatever became of his life, the
burden should be carried. This helpless woman, who stood to him in the
relation of mother, should be made happy. From the moment of his father's
death, he had assumed this obligation as a sacrament; and, if it lasted
his life out, he would never dream of evading or lessening it. In this
fine fibre of loyalty, Stephen White and Mercy Philbrick were alike:
though it was in him more an exalted sentiment; in her, simply an organic
necessity. In him, it would always have been in danger of taking morbid
shapes and phases; of being over-ridden and distorted at any time by
selfishness or wickedness in its object, as it had been by his selfish
mother. In Mercy, it was on a higher and healthier plane. Without being a
shade less loyal, she would be far clearer-sighted; would render, but not
surrender; would give a lifetime of service, but not a moment of
subjection. There was a shade of something feminine in Stephen's loyalty,
of something perhaps masculine in Mercy's; but Mercy's was the best, the
truest.

"I wouldn't allow my mother to treat a stranger like that," she thought
indignantly, as she walked away after Mrs. White's inhospitable invitation
to tea. "I wouldn't allow her. I would make her see the shamefulness of
it. What a weak man Mr. White must be!"

Yet if Mercy could have looked into the room she had just left, and have
seen Stephen listening with a face unmoved, save for a certain compression
of the mouth, and a look of patient endurance in the eyes, to a torrent of
ill-nature from his mother, she would have recognized that he had
strength, however much she might have undervalued its type.

"I should really think that you might have more consideration, Stephen,
than to be so late to tea, when you know it is all I have to look forward
to, all day long. You stood a