“And I must go down to the cotton-mills, and make Clement Sutherland come home to his supper. Heigh-ho! it’s an incontrovertible fact, that if I did not walk after that man and take care of him, he’d kill himself in the pursuit of gain in one month. Everything is forgotten—mental culture and bodily comfort. I have to bully him to his breakfast, and dragoon him to his dinner, and scare him to his supper. If things go on in this way, I shall have to cut up his food and place it to his lips. He is growing to be a monomaniac on the subject of money-getting. He is as thin as a whipping-post, and about as enlivening to look upon. He looks like a weasel in the winter time, all skin and hair, and cunning and care! He looks as if he felt poor in the midst of all his possessions, and I suppose he really does; while here am I, without a sous, cent, markee, happy as a king, and much more at leisure; eating hearty, and sleeping sound, and growing fat; ‘having nothing, yet possessing all things,’ according to Scripture, and without a care in life, except to keep Clement from sharing the fate of Midas, and starving in the midst of gold. And, by-the-by, _that_ is another heathen myth, with an eternal, awful truth wrapped up in it. Heigh-ho!. Well, here’s to bring him home to his supper. And a hot time I shall have of it, between him and the infernal machinery! I shall not get the thunder of the mills out of my ears, or the shower of cotton-lint out of my eyes, nose, and throat, the whole night! Oriole, is that you? Do you go and tell the housekeeper, child, to have something comforting prepared for your poor master. He’s had nothing since breakfast; I couldn’t find him at dinner-time. He was gone, devil knows where, to inspect, devil knows what! He is the only southerner I ever _did_ know to give himself up so entirely to the worship of Mammon, and the only one, I hope, I ever shall know!” And, having eased his mind by this fit of grumbling, Uncle Billy waddled off on his benevolent errand to the mills. In the meantime Mrs. Vivian conducted her step-daughter into the drawing-room communicating with Miss Sutherland’s boudoir. The room was now brilliantly lighted up, but vacant of the family. The broad doors were slidden back into the walls, revealing the boudoir in its rich-toned gloom and gleam of purple and gold; and India herself, standing in the midst, quite lost in thought, with one jewelled hand pressing back the amber ringlets from her forehead, and the other hanging down by her side, clasping the letter of Mr. Sutherland. So deeply troubled and perplexed was her look, that Valeria impulsively sprang to her side, exclaiming, “What grieves you, my dearest India? No evil news, I trust?”