“Well, the last scene, you know, is a small chamber, and the mother and her sick son are asleep. The Blessed Mary glides into the chamber and bends over the young man, and puts her hand lightly on his heart. Then she smiles and disappears. The unhappy mother has seen all this in a dream, and now she awakes, for the dogs are barking loudly. The mother goes over to the bed of her son, and he is dead, and the morning light touches his pale face. And then the mother folds her hands, and says--” He rose hastily with a gesture of fretfulness, and walked over to the window at which Sheila sat, and looked out. She put her hand up to his; he took it. “The next time I try to translate Heine,” he said, making it appear that he had broken off through vexation, “something strange will happen.” “It is a beautiful story,” said Mrs. Lorraine, who had herself been crying a little bit in a covered way, “I wonder I have not seen a translation of it. Come, mamma, Lady Leveret said we were not to be after four.” So they rose and left, and Sheila was alone with her husband, and still holding his hand. She looked up at him timidly, wondering, perhaps, in her simple way, as to whether she should not now pour out her heart to him and tell him all her griefs and fears and yearnings. He had obviously been deeply moved by the story he had told so roughly; surely now was a good opportunity of appealing to him, and begging for sympathy and compassion. “Frank,” she said, and she rose and came close, and bent down her head to hide the color in her face. “Well?” he answered, a trifle coldly. “You won’t be vexed with me,” she said, in a low voice, and with her heart beginning to beat rapidly. “Vexed with you; about what?” he said, abruptly. Alas! all her hopes had fled. She shrank from the cold stare with which she knew he was regarding her. She felt it to be impossible that she should place before him those confidences with which she had approached him; and so, with a great effort, she merely said: “Are we to go to Lady Leveret’s?” “Of course we are,” he said, “unless you would rather go to see some blind fiddler or beggar. It is really too bad of you, Sheila, to be so forgetful; what if Lady Leveret, for example, had come into that shop? It seems to me you are never satisfied with meeting the people you ought to meet, but that you must go and associate with all the wretched cripples and beggars you can find. You should remember you are a woman, and not a child--that people will talk about what you do if you go on in this mad way. Do you ever see Mrs. Kavanagh or her daughter do any of these things?”