"Mammy is to relieve him so soon as he is convinced that human skill

can do nothing for his relief," said Mabel very gravely.

Her sister-in-law's high spirits and jocular tone jarred upon her

most disagreeably, but she tried to bear in mind in what dissimilar

circumstances they had passed the last hour. If Clara appeared

unfeeling, and her remarks were distinguished by less taste than was

customary in one so thoroughly bred, it was because the exhilaration

of the evening was yet upon her, and she had not seen the

death's-head prone upon the pillows in the cheerless attic. Thoughts

of poverty and dying beds were unseemly in this apartment when the

very warmth and fragrance of the air told of fostering and

sheltering love. The heavy curtains did not sway in the blast that

hurled its whole fury against the windows; the furniture was

handsome, and in perfect harmony with the dark, yet glowing hues of

the carpet, and with the tinted walls. A tall dressing mirror let

into a recess reflected the picture, brilliant with firelight that

colored the shadows themselves; lengthened into a deep perspective

the apparent extent of the chamber and showed, like a fine old

painting, the central figure in the vista.

Mrs. Aylett had exchanged her evening dress for a cashmere wrapper,

the dark-blue ground of which was enlivened by a Grecian pattern of

gold and scarlet; her unbound hair draped her shoulders, and framed

her arch face, as she threaded the bronze ripples with her fingers.

She looked contented, restful, complacent in herself and her

belongings--one whom Time had touched lovingly as he swept by, and

whom sorrow had forgotten.

"Not asleep yet!" was her husband's exclamation, entering before

anything further passed between the two women; and when his sister

started up, with an apology for being found there at so late an

hour, he added, more reproachfully than he ever spoke to his wife,

"You should not have kept her up, Mabel! Her strength has been too

much taxed already to-night. I hoped and believed that she had been

in bed and asleep for an hour."

"Don't blame her!" said Mrs. Aylett, hastily. "I called her in as

she was proceeding to bed in the most decorous manner possible. I

may as well own the truth of my weakness. I was nervously

wakeful--the effect, in part, of the ultra-strong coffee Dr. Ritchie

advised me to drink at supper-tine--in part, of the silly sensation

I got up to terrify my friends. So I maneuvered to secure a fireside

companion until you should have dispatched your cigar. Gossip is as

pleasant a sedative to ladies as is a prime Havana to their lords."




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