"It is the old story, Earle," she said, "of worshiping an idol, then finding it clay. You think your pain intolerable, impossible to bear; yet it is but the same as every man, and woman, too, who sets his or her heart upon a creature has to endure. There is no true love in this world, Earle--none," she continued, with passionate bitterness, "except the love of a mother for her child." "I cannot believe it, mother. You loved my father, did you not--and he loved you?" "Yes," she replied, "we had a deep, true, loyal affection for each other, but, Earle, listen, my son. My first love was a young soldier, who died in India; and before he knew me, your father had been deceived just as you have been. Oh! believe me, turn where you will, on which side you may, there is no reliance to be placed on human love." He bent his head with a moan that went to his mother's heart. "Then why," he said, "have I youth, and strength, and life, if I may not have love? I cannot believe it, mother, I love my love, and I will have her--I will search this wide world over, but I will find her. She is mine--my promised wife; her hands have been in mine, I have kissed her lips, and I would rather kill her and slay myself than that any one else should take her from me." And his mother, with all her severity, knew that it was useless to argue with him then, nor did there come to her for long an opportunity for saying any more. That night she knelt by her son's bedside, as she had done many hundreds of times when he was a child; she bathed his hot brow, she made him repeat, after her, the simple prayers he had said as a child; and when, at last, the deep yet troubled sleep fell over him, she prayed as Mattie did--"God save my Earle." Hard, bitter thoughts arose in her mind against the vain girl whose falsity had destroyed him; but the hardest thought, the darkest imagination she had of her, did not equal the reality, which--Heaven be thanked!--she never lived to see. On the next day, Earle was so ill that she would not allow him to get up. Whenever she went near him he was muttering to himself about Doris; and when he spoke aloud, it was always on one subject--going in search of her. It did not surprise Mrs. Moray, on the third day of his illness, to find him in a high fever, and to hear the doctor say, when he was sent for, that he had but little hope of his life. They, for the time, almost forgot Doris in their fear for Earle. As the long days and longer nights passed on, and the danger increased, Mrs. Moray aged terribly--the upright figure grew bent and stooping; the gray hair turned white; deep furrows came in the pale forehead--her whole, sole prayer was for the life of her son.