always managed the linen myself."

A few minutes later, after she had left the room, Iver returned.
He had escaped from the visitors on some excuse.

His heart was a prey to vague yearnings and doubts.

With pleasure he observed that his mother was no longer in the
kitchen. He saw Mehetabel hastily dry her eyes. He knew that she
had been crying, and he thought he could divine the cause.

"You are going to Guildford to-morrow morning, are you not?" she
asked hastily.

"I don't know."

Iver planted himself on a stool before the fire, where he could
look up into Mehetabel's face, as she sat in the settle.

"You have your profession to attend to," she said. "You do not
know your own mind. You are changeful as a girl."

"How can I go--with you here?" he exclaimed, vehemently.

She turned her head away. He was looking at her with burning eyes.

"Iver," she said, "I pray you be more loving to your mother. You
have made her heart ache. It is cruel not to do all you can now to
make amends to her for the past. She thinks that you do not love
her. She is failing in health, and you must not drip drops of
fresh sorrow into her heart during her last years."

Iver made a motion of impatience.

"I love my mother. Of course I love her."

"Not as truly as you should, Iver," answered Mehetabel. "You do
not consider the long ache--"

"And I, had not I a long ache when away from home?"

"You had your art to sustain you. She had but one thought--and that
of you."

"She has done me a cruel wrong," said he, irritably.

"She has never done anything to you but good, and out of love,"
answered the girl vehemently.

"To me; that is not it."

Mehetabel raised her eyes and looked at him. He was gazing moodily
at the fire.

"She has stabbed me through you," exclaimed Iver, with a sudden
outburst of passion. "Why do you plead my mother's cause, when
it was she--I know it was she, and none but she--who thrust you
into this hateful, this accursed marriage."

"No, Iver, no!" cried Mehetabel in alarm. "Do not say this. Iver!
talk of something else."

"Of what?"

"Of anything."

"Very well," said he, relapsing into his dissatisfied mood. "You
asked me once what my dream had been, that I dreamt that first
night under your roof. I will tell you this now. I thought that
you and I had been married, not you and Jonas, you and I, as it
should have been. And I thought that I looked at you, and your
face was deadly pale, and the h