After a long conversation, the father and son parted. Dr. Wainwright felt considerable regret that George's feelings should be thus involved; but he reasoned upon the case, according to his lights and convictions, and did not exaggerate its importance, believing that his son was not the sort of man to make himself perfectly uncomfortable about any woman whom it was quite impossible he should marry. He thought about the whole party after his son had left him--of Annette with liking and compassion; of George with affection, and a recognition of the difference which existed between his own mind and his son's; and of the Derinzys with supreme contempt. Perhaps, in the long list of his friends and patients, there were not to be found two individuals whom Dr. Wainwright--a man not given to venerating his fellow-creatures--more thoroughly despised than Captain and Mrs. Derinzy. And then he turned to his books again, and forgot them. From his father's chambers in the Albany, George Wainwright went direct to the Derinzys' house. Mrs. Derinzy was at home, as was Miss Annette; but Mr. Wainwright could not on this occasion have the pleasure of seeing the Captain. So far, everything was propitious to that gentleman's wishes; and he entered the small back drawing-room, which no one but a house-agent or an upholsterer would have called a boudoir, where. Annette was usually to be found, lounging near a flower-crowded balcony, with the feeling of joy at seeing her again decidedly predominant. He was philosophic, but he was something more than a philosopher; and this afflicted girl had become inexpressibly dear to him, had inspired him with a love in which selfishness had a strangely small share. Annette was in her usual place, and she rose to meet George with an expression of simple unaffected pleasure. Mrs. Derinzy, who was also in the room, greeted him with cold politeness. She was not so foolish as to persist in believing she could have carried her design to a successful issue in any case; but she vas quite sufficiently unjust to resent George's influence over Annette, though she knew it had never been employed against her, and though she felt a malicious satisfaction in contemplating the hopelessness of the affair. "If anyone would marry an insane woman, knowing all about her, it certainly would not be a mad doctor's son," thought Mrs. Derinzy, and was pleased to feel that other people's plans had to "gang a-gley" as completely as her own. George took Mrs. Derinzy's manner very calmly and contentedly. He did not care about Mrs. Derinzy or her manner. He was thinking of Annette, and reading the indications of health, or the opposite, in her pleased agitated face.