Lady Wetheral sunk into a long illness. Her strife of heart--the strife of a high and determined spirit contending with bitter mortifications in all those things which she had so fondly cherished--had nearly proved fatal to her frame, and she was long vibrating between life and death. But her naturally good constitution, and the unremitting attentions of her daughters, overcame the attacks of a dangerous malady, and gradually Lady Wetheral became again convalescent. The body slowly acquired some portion of renewed health, but the mind was fixed in gloomy irritability. Nothing could exceed her ladyship's unbearable tyranny to those gentle beings who strove to soothe her long confinement. The victims of her ambitious projects were now the objects of constant petty and vexatious attacks. Christobelle had one near her who could lure her disquiets into happy tranquillity--but Lady Ennismore almost sunk under their distressing influence. Sir John Wetheral bore all his trials with the resignation of a man who received good and evil things from his Maker's hands, and accepted them as means of evidencing his patience and resignation. He endured his lady's most disagreeable taunts with the fortitude belonging to his estimable character: he only appeared to suffer when those taunts were levelled at the heartbroken, gentle Julia. Lady Wetheral's tyrannical temper seemed irrecoverable even by the operation of time, or gentle forbearance. Mrs. Bevan remarked "that her lady's eyes and manner were peculiarly vehement in their expression, during her reproaches addressed to Lady Ennismore." It _must_ have been a powerful feeling which could produce such a change of manner in one whose whole existence had been devoted to the exercise of self-command, and who had ever deprecated the bad taste and uselessness of "scenes;" it must have been an overwhelming feeling of ambition trampled to the earth, which bore down a mind so keenly alive, so restless in its purposes, and so successful in its schemes.