Misfortune binds closer than prosperity. The calamity which tied Laurence Aspinall down in a strait-waistcoat to a bed of fever, with shaven head and sightless eyes, touched the Ashtons in a tender point. Themselves the parents of an only child, the very crown and glory of their lives, their sympathies went forth to Mr. Aspinall, in spite of his haughty assumption. Indeed, distress brought him down to the common level of humanity; and having neither sister, aunt, nor cousin to undertake the care of his sick son for love, and not for fee, he learned the comparative powerlessness of wealth, and hailed with all the gratitude in his nature the occasional visits of Mrs. Ashton, in whose stately bearing, no doubt, he recognised a sort of kinship. It was, however, not Mrs. Ashton the business woman, not Mrs. Ashton the lofty lady, but Mrs. Ashton the mother who laid her cool hand on the young man’s fevered forehead, questioned the nurses, made suggestions for the benefit of the invalid, and by means of a “Ladies’ Free Registry” in Chapel Walk, found a staid woman of experience to act as housekeeper, and bring the disorganised household into order without treading on the toes of attached but incapable Kitty. The head of Antinous shorn of its glorious locks, swathed in lotion-cloths, tossing in delirium, would scarcely appear so attractive as to fill the most timid mother with fears for a romantic daughter’s heart, and so whilst sympathy was awake vigilance slumbered. Yet never need vigilance have been more awake. She saw him as he was—Augusta, as he had been. Through other channels than the maternal she heard of his condition from day to day, and how in his delirium he had mixed up her name with the slang of the cock-pit, the race-course, and the prize-ring; but with strange infatuation she ignored all that should have warned, and clung to all that was pleasant to her own self-love. Never had she been so assiduous in her visits to her aunt Chadwick and her cousin Walmsley; and her smiling “I’ve brought my work and come to sit with you this afternoon,” should have been translated, “I hope John or Mr. Travis will drop in. They are sure to have something to say about Mr. Laurence; it is so dreadful not to know how he is going on.”