About three weeks after Christmas Althea was sitting alone in her library. The great room felt strangely empty that morning. There was no curly head to be seen bending over the writing table in Cosy Nook; no girl secretary to answer the silver chiming of Althea's little bell. Waveney and Doreen had gone up to town for a day's shopping, leaving Althea to enjoy the rest that she so sorely needed. The severe round of Christmas feastings, the lavish dispensing of cakes and ale, would have tried a robust constitution, and even Doreen complained of unwonted fatigue; but Althea, highly strung and sensitive, had to pay the usual penalty for over-exertion by one of her painful eye attacks, which lasted for three or four days, leaving her weak and depressed. It is strange and sad how mind and body react on each other in these attacks. A grey haze, misty and impalpable, seemed to veil Althea's inner world, and blot out her cheerfulness. The free, healthy current of her thoughts was checked by dimly discerned obstacles. A chilling sense of self-distrust, of rashly undertaken work, made her heart heavy. "It is brain-sickness," Doreen would say, to comfort her. "It will pass, my dear." "Yes, it will pass," returned Althea, with passive gentleness. "I know that as well as you do, Dorrie; but for the time it masters me. Althea ill and Althea well seem two different persons. Is it not humiliating, dear, to think we are at the mercy of our over-wrought nerves? A trifling ailment, a little bodily discomfort, and, if we are at heaven's very gate, we drop to earth like the lark." "Into our nest," returned Doreen, with a smile. "You have chosen too cheerful a simile. Larks soar perpetually, and they sing as they soar." "I think I am more like a blind mole at the present moment," replied Althea, pushing up her shade a little, that she might see her sister's face. "Dorrie, I am ashamed of myself. I deserve any amount of scolding. I try to count up my blessings, to think of my girls' happy faces, but I am fast in my Slough of Despond, and not all your efforts will pull me out." "Very well, then, we must leave you there," returned Doreen, composedly; but she gave Althea's hand a loving little squeeze as she said this. Her heart was full of tenderness and sympathy, but she was too sensible to waste words fruitlessly. These sick moods were purely physical, and would yield, she knew well, to time and rest. They were trials to be borne--part of Althea's life-discipline--the cloud that checkered their home cheerfulness; for these melancholy moods seemed to pervade the whole house. Althea felt much as usual that morning, though she had not quite recovered her looks. Her face seemed longer and more sallow, and there were tired lines round her eyes. When a woman has passed her youth, mental suffering leaves an indelible mark; and Althea looked old and worn that day, and more like Queen Elizabeth's Wraith than ever.