To hurt the same person is a surer bond than to love the same person; and this sentiment of Mary Wells, coupled with her uniform kindness to himself, gave her great influence with Sir Charles in his present weakened condition. Moreover, the young woman had an oily, persuasive tongue; and she who persuades us is stronger than he who convinces us. Thus influenced, Sir Charles walked every day in the garden with his wife, and forbore all direct allusion to her condition, though his conversation was redolent of it. He was still subject to sudden collapses of the intellect; but he became conscious when they were coming on; and at the first warning he would insist on burying himself in his room. After some days he consented to take short drives with Lady Bassett in the open carriage. This made her very joyful. Sir Charles refused to enter a single house, so high was his pride and so great his terror lest he should expose himself; but it was a great point gained that she could take him about the county, and show him in the character of a mere invalid. Every thing now looked like a cure, slow, perhaps, but progressive; and Lady Bassett had her joyful hours, yet not without a bitter alloy: her divining mind asked itself what she should say and do when Sir Charles should be quite recovered. This thought tormented her, and sometimes so goaded her that she hated Mary Wells for her well-meant interference, and, by a natural recoil from the familiarity circumstances had forced on her, treated that young woman with great coldness and hauteur. The artful girl met this with extreme meekness and servility; the only reply she ever hazarded was an adroit one; she would take this opportunity to say, “How much better master do get ever since I took in hand to cure him!” This oblique retort seldom failed. Lady Bassett would look at her husband, and her face would clear; and she would generally end by giving Mary a collar, or a scarf, or something. Thus did circumstances enable the lower nature to play with the higher. Lady Bassett's struggles were like those of a bird in a silken net; they led to nothing. When it came to the point she could neither do nor say any thing to retard his cure. Any day the Court of Chancery, set in motion by Richard Bassett, might issue a commission _de lunatico,_ and, if Sir Charles was not cured by that time, Richard Bassett would virtually administer the estate--so Mr. Oldfield had told her--and that, she felt sure, would drive Sir Charles mad for life. So there was no help for it. She feared, she writhed, she hated herself; but Sir Charles got better daily, and so she let herself drift along. Mary Wells made it fatally easy to her. She was the agent. Lady Bassett was silent and passive. After all she had a hope of extrication. Sir Charles once cured, she would make him travel Europe with her. Money would relieve her of Mary Wells, and distance cut all the other cords.