pt my room for me, mother," I said,
reproachfully.

"So I would," she replied, her lips quivering, "but Miss Daltrey took a
fancy to it, and your father and Julia made a point of indulging her. I
really think Julia would have had every thing belonging to you swept
into the streets. It was very hard for me, Martin. I was ten times more
vexed than you are to give up your room to Miss Daltrey. It was my only
comfort to go and sit there, and think of my dear boy." "Never mind,
never mind," I answered. "I am at home now, and you will never be left
alone with them again--nevermore, mother."

I retreated to the spare room, fully satisfied that I should dislike
Miss Daltrey quite as much as my mother could wish. Finding that Julia
prolonged her visit downstairs, I went out after a while for a stroll in
the old garden, where the trees and shrubs had grown with my growth, and
were as familiar as human friends to me. I visited Madam in her stall,
and had a talk with old Pellet; and generally established my footing
once more as the only son of the house; not at all either as if I were a
prodigal son, come home repentant. I was resolved not to play that
_role_, for had I not been more sinned against than sinning?

My father came in to dinner; but, like a true man of the world, he
received me back on civil and equal terms, not alluding beyond a word or
two to my long absence. We began again as friends; and our mutual
knowledge of my mother's fatal malady softened our hearts and manners
toward one another. Whenever he was in-doors he waited upon her with
sedulous attention. But, for the certainty that death was lurking very
near to us, I should have been happier in my home than I had ever been
since that momentous week in Sark. But I was also nearer to Olivia, and
every throb of my pulse was quickened by the mere thought of that.

CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SIXTH.

A NEW PATIENT.

In one sense, time seemed to be standing still with me, so like were the
days that followed the one to the other. But in another sense those days
fled with awful swiftness, for they were hurrying us both, my mother and
me, to a great gulf which would soon, far too soon, lie between us.

Every afternoon Julia came to spend an hour or two with my mother; but
her arrival was always formally announced, and it was an understood
thing that I should immediately quit the room, to avoid meeting her.
There was an etiquette in her resentment which I was bound to