She always wore a pained expression when her sister-in-law was present; but as the sister-in-law could not see it, it did no harm. She always dreaded the next word. They had always been uncongenial; but it is one thing to have an uncongenial sister-in-law that you can get away from, or go to see only when you are braced up to the business, and another to have her under your own roof, a prisoner, by reason of her misfortune and your sense of duty--able to prey upon you whether you are well or ill; as familiar and everyday as your dressing-gown and slippers; having no respect for your engagements or your indigestions. When this blindness threw Harriet Varian upon her hands, she felt as if her home were invaded, desecrated, spoiled, but she had not a moment's hesitation as to her duty. A frivolous youth and a worldly, pleasure-seeking maturity, had ill prepared the poor woman for her dreary doom. She had fitted herself to it with a bitter philosophy; for do we not all fit ourselves to our lot, in one way or another. "_L'homme est en délire s'il ose murmurer_," but it is to be hoped Heaven is not always critical in the matter of resignation. Harriet Varian had submitted, but she was in the primer of Christian principle, as it were; attaining with difficulty in middle age the lesson that would have been easy to her, if she had begun in childhood. When you have spent thirty-four years in having your own way, and consulting your own pleasure quite exclusively, it comes a trifle hard to do exactly as you do not wish to do, and to find that pleasure is a term unknown in your vocabulary: when you are old that another should gird you and lead you whither you would not.