"Harry, Harry," she said, "I pray thee, come here." Then, when I approached, hesitating, for I had a shrinking before some outburst of feminine earnestness, which has always intimidated me by its fire of helplessness and futility playing against some resolve of mine which I could not, on account of my masculine understanding of the requirements of circumstances, allow to melt, she reached up one hand like a little nervous claw of ivory, and caught me by the sleeve and pulled me down to a stool by her side. Then she looked at me, and such love and even adoration were in her face as I never saw surpassed in it, even when she regarded her granddaughter Mary, yet withal a cruel distress and self-upbraiding and wrath at herself and me. "Harry, Harry," she said, "I can bear no more of this." Then, to my consternation, up went her silken apron with a fling to her old face, and she was weeping under it as unrestrainedly as any child. I did not know what to do nor say. "Madam," I ventured, finally, "if you distress yourself in such wise for my sake, 'tis needless, I assure, 'tis needless, and with as much truth as were you my own mother." "Oh, Harry, Harry," she sobbed out, "know you not that is why I cannot bear it longer, because you yourself bear it with no complaint?" Then she sobbed and even wailed with that piteousness of the grief of age exceeding that of infancy, inasmuch as the weight of all past griefs of a lifetime go to swell it, and it is enhanced by memory as well as by the present and an unknown future. I knew not what to do, but laid a hand somewhat timidly on one of her thin silken arms, and strove to draw it gently from her face. "Madam Cavendish," I said, "indeed you mistake if you weep for me. At this moment I would change places with no man in Virginia."