e
despairs of an ailing and unhappy childhood; the thwarted aspirations of
a romantic and sensitive boyhood; the doubts and disappointments of a
young manhood conspicuously rich in promise, had the fates and his fellow
creatures but shown themselves more intelligently sensible of his merits
and his needs.

For this was the burden of his recurrent lament. Throughout life he had
been misunderstood.

"But you, Miss Verity, do understand me," he almost passionately
declared, waving white effeminate hands. "Ah! a pure influence such
as yours"--

Here, rather to Damaris' thankfulness, words appeared to fail him. He
moved to the piano and exhaled his remaining emotion in song.

Affairs had reached the above point about ten days after Henrietta's
party and Damaris' midnight walk with Colonel Carteret by the shore of
the sounding sea. General Frayling, though mending, was still possessed
of a golden complexion and a temperature slightly above the normal, while
his dutiful wife, still self-immured, was in close attendance, when an
event occurred which occasioned her considerable speculation and
perplexity.

It came about thus. At her request Marshall Wace walked up to the
station early that morning, to secure the English papers on their arrival
by the mail train from Paris. After a quite unnecessarily long interval,
in Henrietta's opinion, he returned with an irritable expression and
flustered manner. Such, at least, was the impression she received on his
joining her in the wide airy corridor outside the General's sick-chamber.

"I thought you were never coming back," she greeted him. "What has
detained you?"

"The Paris train was late," he returned. "And--wait an instant, Cousin
Henrietta. I want to speak to you. Yes, I am hot and tired, and I am put
out--I don't deny it."

"Why?" Henrietta asked him indifferently.

Her own temper was not at its brightest and best. The office of
ministering angel had begun most woefully to pall on her. What if this
illness betokened a break up of health on the part of General Frayling?
Bath chairs, hot bottles, air-cushions, pap-like meals and such kindred
unlovelinesses loomed large ahead! That was the worst of marrying an old,
or anyhow an oldish, man. You never could tell how soon the natural order
of things might be reversed, and you obliged to wait hand and foot on
him, instead of his waiting hand and foot on you. Henrietta felt fretful.
Her looking-glass presented a depressing