o doubt understood,"--he dropped in
often at the little bookstore, to begin with a "how-do?" and
conclude with an "_au revoir_,"--the ineffable puppy! upon whose
vicious vanity the cold, still, statuesque scorn of Miss Wimple was
grandly lost. At last, at the Splurge house one evening, in the
presence of Adelaide and Simon, he was betrayed by his egotism into
boasting, by insinuation, of certain successes at the Circulating
Library most damaging to Miss Wimple's reputation for understanding
and good taste; he was "in her books," he said.

An accordant glance passed between Adelaide and Simon. When Withers
retired, Simon followed him, and under Adelaide's window, and under
her eyes, he boxed the ears of Philip, the Debonair. After that,
Mr. Withers was discreeter.

But Miss Wimple's trial was not yet at its worst. The low-necked
dress had been as unseasonable as the substitution of the hooped
skirt for the quilted petticoat was imprudent. Before Madeline had
been gone a week, she contracted, as was to be feared, a heavy cold,
which within a month assumed a chronic bronchial form, attended with
alarming symptoms. The extreme dejection of spirits, consequent upon
her persecuted loneliness, had predisposed her to disease in the
first place, and aggravated its character when it came.

At last she fell dangerously ill, and with the closing of the
shop--for she could hire no one to attend in it--came poverty in its
most dreadful form. But for the charity of her kind physician, who
sent a servant-girl, a mere child, to nurse her, and daily kept her
supplied with proper nourishment from his own house, she would, so
it seemed to her, have died of neglect and starvation. Yet better,
she thought, to depart even so, than linger on, when such lingering
taxed the patience and the faith beyond the loftiest examples of
religion. Miss Wimple was too stout-hearted to cry for death, though
she felt, that, having lived with heroism, she could at least die
with presence of mind. She waited, with a composure that had a
strange quality of pride.

In her New York home, Mrs. Morris, the governess, was as happy as
she dared to feel. In Mr. Osgood's family she had found all things
as Miss Wimple had promised. Treated with studious deference and
consideration, not unmixed with affection, she enjoyed for her
secret thoughts the most privileged privacy. Her brave gratitude was
superior to the distress a weaker woman might have suffered from the