“Rossie,” he said vehemently, “I wish to Heaven I could honorably subscribe to the whole of it, but I cannot. I must erase the part about Joe Fleming. I cannot explain to you why, but I must keep my acquaintance with Joe, but I’ll promise not to be influenced in that direction any more. Will that do?” “Yes, but I did so hope you would break with him entirely. I know he makes you bad. You told me when you came home you had no debts, and I believed you, and yet you owed this man seventy-five dollars, and I was so sorry to find you did not tell me true.” Rossie’s eyes were full of tears as she said this, for losing faith in Everard had hurt her sorely, but he hastened to reassure her. “Rossie,” he said, “I did not know of this debt then. It has come up since. What I told you was told in good faith. Bad as I am, I would not tell a deliberate lie, and you must believe me.” She did believe him, and watched him as he put his pen through the sentence, “have just as little to do with Joe Fleming as I possibly can,” and then signed his name to the paper. “There!” he said, as he handed it to her with a sickly effort to smile. “Keep it, Rossie, and if I break that pledge, may I never succeed in anything I undertake so long as I live; and now bathe my head with the coldest ice-water in the house, for it feels as if there was a bass drum in it.” He was very restless and nervous, and did not improve as fast as the doctor had said he would, if once his reason returned. Indeed, for a few days he did not seem to improve at all, and Beatrice and Rosamond both nursed him tenderly, and pitied him so much when they saw him lying so weak and still, with his eyes shut, and the great tears rolling down his face. “It’s for his mother,” Rossie whispered to her companion, and her own tears gathered as she remembered the sweet woman whose grave was so fresh in the church-yard.