g room, and sat down to sew
baby-linen clandestinely.

After a considerable tune Lady Bassett came in, and, sinking into a
chair, covered her face with her hands. She had her bonnet on.

Mary Wells looked at her with black eyes that flashed triumph.

After so surveying her for some time she said: "I have been at him
again, and there's a change for the better already. He is not the same
man. You go and see else."

Lady Bassett now obeyed her servant: she rose and crept like a culprit
into Sir Charles's room. She found him clean shaved, dressed to
perfection, and looking more cheerful than she had seen him for many a
long day. "Ah, Bella," said he, "you have your bonnet on; let us have a
walk in the garden."

Lady Bassett opened her eyes and consented eagerly, though she was very
tired.

They walked together; and Sir Charles, being a man that never broke his
word, put no direct question to Lady Bassett, but spoke cheerfully of
the future, and told her she was his hope and his all; she would baffle
his enemy, and cheer his desolate hearth.

She blushed, and looked confused and distressed; then he smiled, and
talked of indifferent matters, until a pain in his head stopped him;
then he became confused, and, putting his hand piteously to his head,
proposed to retire at once to his own room.

Lady Bassett brought him in, and he reposed in silence on the sofa.

The next day, and, indeed, many days afterward, presented similar
features.

Mary Wells talked to her master of the bright days to come, of the joy
that would fill the house if all went well, and of the defeat in store
for Richard Bassett. She spoke of this man with strange virulence; said
"she would think no more of sticking a knife into him than of eating
her dinner;" and in saying this she showed the white of her eye in a
manner truly savage and vindictive.

To hurt the same person is a surer bond than to love the same person;
and this sentiment of Mary Wells, coupled with her uniform kindness to
himself, gave her great influence with Sir Charles in his present
weakened condition. Moreover, the young woman had an oily, persuasive
tongue; and she who persuades us is stronger than he who convinces us.

Thus influenced, Sir Charles walked every day in the garden with his
wife, and forbore all direct allusion to her condition, though his
conversation was redolent of it.

He was still subject to sudden collapses of the intellect; but he
became conscious wh