"Yes," said Aunt Sophia, laying her hand upon his arm softly, and looking almost tenderly in his face, "you are a strange couple.--And now," she continued, "tell me about my poor nephew. Tell me frankly, have you any hope of his becoming the man he was?" "Hope? Yes," he replied gloomily; "but little more. I have done and am doing all I can; but the human frame with all its nerves is a terrible mystery, in whose darkness one moves with awe." "Then you give him up?" "Give him up!" said Scales, with a short laugh--"give him up? Miss Raleigh; you don't know me yet. I'll never give him up. He's my study--the study of my life, and I shall fight on out of sheer obstinacy. I've plenty of _amour propre_, and it's touched here. I've learned one thing about him, and that's my lighthouse by which I steer." "What do you mean?" "I mean that Nature will perform the cure if cure there is to be; but Nature will not do it alone without a little guiding and calling upon at important times." "I wish you success," said Aunt Sophia softly, as they came once more in sight of Arthur Prayle, now seated in one of the garden-seats, still deep in his book; and as she spoke her eyes were fixed upon the reader. "I will help you, doctor, and you must help me. Now, I am going on with my gardening." She left him, and walked straight back to her slug scissors, resuming her task as if nothing had happened, while the doctor stood looking after her. "Old maid!" he said to himself. "I called her an old maid. Good heavens! Why, the woman is a saint!" Volume 2, Chapter X. NICE TASK FOR AN OLD MAID. "I declare," said Aunt Sophia to herself, "it is quite ridiculous as well as shocking. Here I seem to be set up as the head of a sort of wedding bureau, for everybody seized with the silly complaint." "Oh, aunt, dear, it isn't a silly complaint--it's a very bad one," sobbed Naomi, who had sought the old lady in her bedroom. "Oh, stuff and nonsense, child!" "But it is, aunt; it's dreadful--worse than anything. You never knew how bad it was." "No, child," said Aunt Sophia softly--"so people say;" and she laid her hand tenderly upon the head of the sobbing girl. "It--it's bad enough when--when you think--he loves you--and you--you-- you--you are waiting--for him to speak; but--when--wh--wh--when he doesn't speak at all, and--and you find out--he--he loves some one else--it--it breaks your heart," sobbed poor Naomi. "I shall never be happy again." "Hush, hush, my darling. Not so bad as that, I hope. And pray, who is is that you love, and who loves some one else?" "Nobody!" cried Naomi, lifting her face and speaking passionately, and with all the child-like anger of a susceptible girl with no very great depth of feeling. "I hate him--I detest him--I'll never speak to him again. He's a wicked, base, bad man, and--and--I wish he was dead."