“Yet I never saw you look so wretchedly, act so strangely in my life; what is the cause? _Do_ tell me, and let me see if I can aid you by sympathy or advice.” “You can do me no good,” said Hagar, pausing in perplexity a moment, as Sophie still held her hand and gazed pleadingly in her anguished countenance, “and Sophie, do not, if you please, take any further notice of my looks; is it not natural, by the way, that I should look rather thin after my illness, and with the care of two infants?” and coldly returning Sophie’s embrace, she bade her good night and left the room. Several days passed in this manner. The next Sabbath the family all went to church—all except Sophie, who stopped at home with the headache, Hagar, who stayed to keep her company, and Raymond, who remained for some purpose of his own. They were sitting in Hagar’s dressing-room, grouped near one of the front windows. The babies were awake; Sophie held Agnes, and Hagar kept the other, Agatha, whom she fancied to be the more delicate, on her lap. Hagar was looking very attentively at her child. It seemed to her that for days the children, especially this little one, had been declining in flesh; she was beginning to believe that the disturbance of her own health was reacting upon the children, and so maternal anxiety was added to her other causes of uneasiness. At this moment, Raymond entered the room, and throwing himself into an easy chair, inquired after Sophie’s headache, and then looking at Hagar, who, sitting in the cross-light, looked ten degrees thinner and ghastlier than ever, he said— “Sophie, will you look at your niece, and then at her children, and will you inform her of the fate to which she is dooming _them_, to say nothing of herself, by her obstinacy?” Sophie’s large eyes started, dilated, and turned in apprehension from Raymond to Hagar, from Hagar to the children, and she remained silent from perplexity. Then Raymond put her calmly in possession of the disputed point between himself and Hagar—keeping Hagar silent, meanwhile, by an occasional menace piercing through his gentle eyes; at ending, he said— “Now, ever since you have been here, Sophie, do you not perceive that all three have declined in health?” “Yes,” said Sophie, “that is too palpable to be denied.” Then turning to Hagar, she said, “Your health, and consequently your children’s health, is suffering, my dear Hagar.” “It is from _anxiety_,” began Hagar, when, meeting her husband’s eye, and recollecting herself, she ceased. “From _whatever_ cause, dear Hagar,” said he, “your health _is_ sinking, and you will have at length to succumb to circumstances.” A message now summoned Raymond from the room, and the two ladies were left alone. “Yes, dear Hagar, for the children’s sake you will have to give them up.”