But I was too wretched to listen to her. They were not old fogies to me--those two experienced men--and a young doctor is but a young doctor, however clever; I found it impossible to hope at this juncture. Lily was kneeling by me with her arms round my waist, quite hysterical with grief; and for the moment I felt that she was more in sympathy with me than her sister. I realised my mistake when the child suddenly sprang to her feet, hitting my chin with her head as she did so, and declared that she must go to "poor Miss Blount." "Lily," I cried, as she was flinging out of the room in her impetuous fashion, "what are strangers at such a time as this?" "Nothing," said Lily, in a brazen way--she would never have spoken to her mother in that tone if she had not been encouraged; "but Miss Blount is not a stranger. She loves Harry, and Harry loves her, and she's broken-hearted, and she's ill, and she's nearly out of her mind, and nobody ever says a kind word to her! Even now that he's dying, and they can't have each other, you treat her as if she were dirt. Poor, poor Emily! Let me go to her! Now that Harry's dying, she's got nobody--not a soul in this house--but me!" Well, indeed! Who'd be a mother, if she could foresee what would come of it? To have this blow, on the top of all the rest, and at _such_ a moment! I felt quite stunned. At first I could only stare at her--I could not speak; then I said, "Go, go!" and pointed to the door. For I could bear no more. As soon as she was gone, I turned to my faithful Phyllis, put my head on her shoulder, and sobbed like a baby. "Oh, Phyllis," I cried, "never you get married, my dear! Never you have children, to suffer through them as I suffer!" She was wiser than I, however. She said she didn't think it was altogether the children's fault. I admitted it at once. "You are quite right," I said, "and I was wrong. It is not the children's fault. It's the fault of that hateful creature, who has set them both against me. First Harry, then Lily--the very one she was hired to teach her duty to! Fancy a governess, calling herself a governess, and a B.A. to boot, corrupting an innocent young girl, a mere child, with all the details of a clandestine love intrigue! What infamy! What treachery!" I was beside myself when I thought of it. Any mother would have been.