is crown. You only hate your brother;
you would not, you say, do him any harm; and I believe you would not do
him mere bodily harm; but, were things changed, so that hate-action
became absolutely safe, I should have no confidence what you might not
come to do. No one can tell what wreck a gust of passion upon a sea of
hate may work. There are men a man might well kill, if he were anything
less than ready to die for them. The difference between the man that
hates and the man that kills may be nowhere but in the courage. These
are _grewsome_ thinkings: let us leave them--but hating with them.

All the afternoon Sepia hovered about Mr. Rcdmain's door, down upon
Mewks every moment he appeared. Her head ached; she could hardly
breathe. Rest she could not. Once when Mewks, coming from the room,
told her his master was asleep, she crept in, and, softly approaching
the head of the bed, looked at him from behind, then stole out again.

"He seems dying, Mewks," she said.

"Oh, no, miss! I've often seen him as bad. He's better."

"Who's that whispering?" murmured the patient, angrily, though half
asleep.

Mewks went in, and answered:

"Only me and Jemima, sir."

"Where's Miss Marston?"

"She's not come yet, sir."

"I want to go to sleep again. You must wake me the moment she comes."

"Yes, sir."

Mewks went back to Sepia.

"His voice is much altered," she said.

"He most always speaks like that now, miss, when he wakes--very
different from I used to know him! He'd always swear bad when he woke;
but Miss Marston do seem t' 'ave got a good deal of that out of him.
Anyhow, this last two days he's scarce swore enough to make it feel
home-like."

"It's death has got it out of him," said Sepia. "I don't think he can
last the night through. Fetch me at once if--And don't let that Marston
into the room again, whatever you do."

She spoke with the utmost emphasis, plainly clinching instructions
previously given, then went slowly up the stair to her own room. Surely
he would die to-night, and she would not be led into temptation! She
would then have but to get a hold of the paper! What a hateful and
unjust thing it was that her life should be in the power of that man--a
miserable creature, himself hanging between life and death!--that such
as he should be able to determine her fate, and say whether she was to
be comfortable or miserable all the rest of a life that was to outlast
his so many years! It was absurd to talk o