the errors of the past. They can't help doing that. I myself suffer at
times pretty sharply from twinges of the rheumatism which I owe to
youthful dissipation. It would be absurd enough for me, a quiet old
fellow of sixty, to take blame to myself for what the wild student did,
but, all the same, I confoundedly wish he hadn't.

"Ah, me!" continued the doctor. "Is there not sorrow and wrong enough in
the present world without having moralists teach us that it is our duty
to perpetuate all our past sins and shames in the multiplying mirror of
memory, as if, forsooth, we were any more the causers of the sins of our
past selves than of our fathers' sins. How many a man and woman have
poisoned their lives with tears for some one sin far away in the past!
Their folly is greater, because sadder, but otherwise just like that of
one who should devote his life to a mood of fatuous and imbecile
self-complacency over the recollection of a good act he had once done.
The consequences of the good and the bad deeds our fathers and we have
done fall on our heads in showers, now refreshing, now scorching, of
rewards and of penalties alike undeserved by our present selves. But,
while we bear them with such equanimity as we may, let us remember that
as it is only fools who flatter themselves on their past virtues, so it
is only a sadder sort of fools who plague themselves for their past
faults."

Henry's quick ear caught a rustle in the retiring-room. He stepped to the
door and looked in. Madeline was sitting up.

CHAPTER XII.

Her attitude was peculiar. Her feet were on the floor, her left hand
rested on the sofa by her side, her right was raised to one temple and
checked in the very act of pushing back a heavy braid of hair which had
been disarranged in sleep. Her eyebrows were slightly contracted, and she
was staring at the carpet. So concentrated did her faculties appear to be
in the effort of reflection that she did not notice Henry's entrance
until, standing by her aide, he asked, in a voice which he vainly tried
to steady--

"How do you feel ?"

She did not look up at him at all, but replied, in the dreamy, drawling
tone of one in a brown study--

"I--feel--well. I'm--ever--so--rested."

"Did you just wake up?" he said, after a moment. He did not know what to
say.

She now glanced up at him, but with an expression of only partial
attention, as if still retaining a hold on the clue of her thoughts.

"I've been a