The smothered fire leaped high--the dark eye blazed with wrath, but she uttered not a sound, as she turned from him. Ida had never seen such a look in mortal face, and wild with fear of, she know not what, darted after her, and overtook her in the dressing-room. "Oh! do not! do not!" she exclaimed, flinging her arms around the stately form. "Do not what?" said the lady, trying to unlock her fingers. Ida held her fast. "Oh! the horrible thing that is in your thoughts! He is mad with pain--he did not mean--did not think what he did. He says as hard things to me, to every one--but he loves you! he _does_ love you!" and dropping her head upon the lady's breast, she sobbed like a child. The haughty woman stood irresolute--passive in the tenacious grasp of the over-excited girl. "He drove me from him--struck me!" she said, in thick accents. "Why should I stay?" It was rather a soliloquy than a question, and Ida reiterated, "He did not mean it! he loves you!" "Do _you_ love him?" inquired the lady, lifting her face, and gazing piercingly into it. "I pity him," said Ida. "Do you hate him?" she asked, more energetically. "No, I hate no one." "Yet you have cause." "I try to forgive." "You do not hate him!" repeated Mrs. Read; and again to herself, she added, "_I_ do!" Ida let her go. "I pity him!" she said, with mournful earnestness, "but I pity you more! doomed to a life of falsehood and misery! Heaven pity you as I do." "Stay!" said Mrs. Read, as she would have gone back to the chamber. "Do you despise me utterly? Am I lost?" "'Lost!' no--while life and reason last, there may be room for repentance." Repentance! what had she, so queenly in her pride and beauty, to do with repentance? yet the words seemed to strike her. Mr. Read's querulous tones called "Ida!" "I must go," she said. "Will you come?" "Not now--presently." The patient was slumbering heavily under the influence of the medicine Dr. Ballard prescribed, when his wife rejoined her assistant nurse--lofty and unimpressible. She regarded the sleeper long and fixedly. His hair was nearly white, and his features pinched by sickness, but there was no softening of compassion in the rigid lines of her face. Setting her chair into the shade, she was speechless and motionless for hours. They watched him together all night; exchanging only brief remarks as to his situation, and the remedies to be employed. He rallied from this seizure, and Ida was as far from the brilliant worldling as before.