en they were coming on; and at the first warning he
would insist on burying himself in his room.

After some days he consented to take short drives with Lady Bassett in
the open carriage. This made her very joyful. Sir Charles refused to
enter a single house, so high was his pride and so great his terror
lest he should expose himself; but it was a great point gained that she
could take him about the county, and show him in the character of a
mere invalid.

Every thing now looked like a cure, slow, perhaps, but progressive; and
Lady Bassett had her joyful hours, yet not without a bitter alloy: her
divining mind asked itself what she should say and do when Sir Charles
should be quite recovered. This thought tormented her, and sometimes so
goaded her that she hated Mary Wells for her well-meant interference,
and, by a natural recoil from the familiarity circumstances had forced
on her, treated that young woman with great coldness and hauteur.

The artful girl met this with extreme meekness and servility; the only
reply she ever hazarded was an adroit one; she would take this
opportunity to say, "How much better master do get ever since I took in
hand to cure him!"

This oblique retort seldom failed. Lady Bassett would look at her
husband, and her face would clear; and she would generally end by
giving Mary a collar, or a scarf, or something.

Thus did circumstances enable the lower nature to play with the higher.
Lady Bassett's struggles were like those of a bird in a silken net;
they led to nothing. When it came to the point she could neither do nor
say any thing to retard his cure. Any day the Court of Chancery, set in
motion by Richard Bassett, might issue a commission _de lunatico,_ and,
if Sir Charles was not cured by that time, Richard Bassett would
virtually administer the estate--so Mr. Oldfield had told her--and
that, she felt sure, would drive Sir Charles mad for life.

So there was no help for it. She feared, she writhed, she hated
herself; but Sir Charles got better daily, and so she let herself drift
along.

Mary Wells made it fatally easy to her. She was the agent. Lady Bassett
was silent and passive.

After all she had a hope of extrication. Sir Charles once cured, she
would make him travel Europe with her. Money would relieve her of Mary
Wells, and distance cut all the other cords.

And, indeed, a time came when she looked back on her present situation
with wonder at the distress it had caused he