With these two sage proverbs--which all acknowledge and scarcely any really believe, or surely they would act a little more as if they did--I leave Johanna Leaf sitting silently in her solitary parlor, knitting stockings for her child; weaving many a mingled web of thought withal, yet never letting a stitch go down; and Hilary Leaf walking cheerily and fearlessly up one strange street and down another to find out the "bad" place, where she once had no idea it would ever have been her lot to go.--One thing she knew, and gloried in the knowledge, that if Robert Lyon had known she was going, or known half the cares she had to meet, he would have recrossed the Indian seas--have risked fortune, competence, hope of the future, which was the only cheer of his hard present--in order to save her from them all. The minute history of this painful day I do not mean to tell. Hilary never told it till, years after, she wept it out upon a bosom that could understand the whole, and would take good care that while the life beat in his she never should go through the like again. Ascott came home--that is, was brought home--very humbled, contrite, and grateful. There was no one to meet him but his Aunt Johanna, and she just kissed him quietly, and bade him come over to the fire; he was shivering, and somewhat pale. He had even two tears in his handsome eyes, the first Ascott had been known to shed since he was a boy. That he felt a good deal, perhaps as much as was in his nature to feel, there could be no doubt. So his two aunts were glad and comforted; gave him his tea and the warmest seat at the hearth; said not a harsh word to him, but talked to him about indifferent things.--Tea being over, Hilary was anxious to get every thing painful ended before Selina came home--Selina, who, they felt by instinct, had now a separate interest from themselves, and had better not be told this sad story if possible; so she asked her nephew "if he remembered what they had to do this evening?" "Had to do? Oh, Aunt Hilary, I'm so tired! can't you let me be quiet? Only this one night. I promise to bring you everything on Monday." "Monday will be too late. I shall be away. And you know you can't do without my excellent arithmetic," she added with a faint smile. "Now, Ascott, be a good boy--fetch down all those bills and let us go over them together." "His debts came to more than the thirty pounds then?" said his Aunt Johanna, when he was gone. "Yes. But the ring sold for fifty." And Hilary drew to the table, got writing materials, and sat waiting, with a dull, silent patience in her look, at which Johanna sighed and said no more. The aunt and nephew spent some time in going over that handful of papers, and approximating to the sum total, in that kind of awful arithmetic when figures cease to be mere figures, but grow into avenging monsters, bearing with them life or death.