what Colin was discussing with himself as he lay on his bed. It was not wonderful that such thoughts should obliterate the image of Miss Matty. When she came into his mind at all, he looked back upon her with a pensive sweetness as on somebody he had known a lifetime before. Sterner matters had now taken the place of the light love and hopes of bountiful and lavish youth. The hopes had grown few, and the abundance changed into poverty. If the author of the change had chosen to reveal the cause for it, the young soul thus stopped short in his way could have consented that all was well. And then Lady Frankland came every day to pay him a visit of sympathy, and to express her gratitude. “It is such a comfort to see him looking so much better,” Lady Frankland said; “Harry would like so much to come and sit with you, dear Mr. Campbell. He could read to you, you know, when you feel tired; I am sure nothing he could do would be too much to show his sense of your regard----” At which words Colin raised himself up. “I should be much better pleased,” said Colin, “if you would not impute to me feelings which I don’t pretend to. It was no regard for Mr. Frankland that induced me----” “Oh, indeed! I know how good you are,” said Harry’s mother, pressing his hand, “always so generous and disposed to make light of your own kindness; but we all know very well, and Harry knows, that there is many a brother who would not have done so much. I am sure I cannot express to you a tenth part of what I feel. Harry’s life is so precious,” said my Lady, with a natural human appreciation of her own concerns, and unconscious, unintentional indifference to those of others. “The eldest son; and Sir Thomas has quite commenced to rely upon him for many things--and I am sure I don’t know what I should do without Harry to refer to,” Lady Frankland continued, with a little smile of maternal pride and triumph. When she came to this point, it chanced to her to catch a side glimpse of Mrs. Campbell’s face. The Mistress sat by her son’s bedside, pale, with her lips set close, and her eyes fixed upon the hem of her apron, which she was folding and refolding in her hands. She did not say anything, nor give utterance in any way to the dumb remonstrance and reproach with which her heart was bursting; but there was something in her face which imposed silence upon the triumphant, prosperous woman beside her. Lady Frankland gave a little gasp of mingled fright and compunction. She did not know what to say to express her full sense of the service which Colin had done her; and there was nothing strange in her instinctive feeling, that she, a woman used to be petted and tended all her life, had a natural claim upon other people’s services. She was very sorry, of course, about Mr. Campbell; if any exertion of hers could have cured him, he would have been well in half-an-hour. But, as it was, it appeared to her rather natural than