The troublesome cough which she had neglected all winter annoyed her more than usual going home, but she was rather shocked than grieved when in the middle of the night a hemorrhage came on. Life was growing hard and duty perplexing. But sheer force of will and affection made her seem better next day, and she would not hear of her husband staying with her. He was pledged to appear elsewhere and she made him go. He did not come in till after midnight, and then--she sat up in sudden terror, listening to that stumbling step, those mumbling speeches! It was not only his election that May had lost that night; his manhood had followed. Laura turned her face to the wall. Was life to hold this new horror? Ah, that she might escape the next day, with its shame, its sorrow and its pitiful regrets. But what she expected did not come. May was constitutionally incapable of confessing himself at fault. He slept off his intoxication and did not get up until he was quite himself again, cool and non-committal. "Bad luck again, girlie," he said with an assumption of indifference. "I can't make you Mrs. Senator this time." "Poor Will!" the wife murmured. "I am sorry, dear." "You are better?" he asked hastily, struck with her expression. "You must have the doctor." It was a tardy suggestion, and Laura smiled sadly. The doctor came, however. But all he could do was to hold out those vague hopes which are no comfort to anxious hearts. Before long her mother was sent for, but the dread disease did its rapid work. Laura's great trial to the last was the terrible sense of responsibility that haunted her about the expenses that were being incurred. "When I am not here, mother, what will he do? Poor fellow, nobody understands him but me." A little while afterwards she aroused herself from a fit of musing and murmured: "This awful feeling of helplessness!--and I tried so hard to set things right. I thought when I had a little income of my own that everything would go well." "You have killed yourself," said her mother, darting a look of reproach at the unconscious husband, who entered the room at this moment. "Oh, no, don't say that," Laura whispered. "I only did what I wanted to do. Will and I have been very happy, only----" But neither the mother nor the husband, bending over the bed, heard the rest of the sentence. THE LAZIEST GIRL IN VIRGINIA.[6] UPON the Virginia side of the Potomac River, five miles across from Washington City whose twinkling lights can be distinctly seen by night, lies a little farm of about twenty-five acres, owned by a widow and her three daughters, Caroline, Minnie and Rosa. The dwelling is a villa rather than a farm-house, with wide verandas that are the favorite sitting-rooms of the family in summer. The glimpse they catch of the river traffic and of the far-off city gives them a cheerful feeling of nearness to active life, while they are removed from its noise and crowds.