“Do you know,” said the visitor, clasping her hands and resting them on his table, “that Frank’s twenty-fifth birthday is on the fifth of next month?” She looked at him as she had never done before. Her eyes might have been anxious on previous occasions, but they were also full of other things: they had light glances aside, a desire to please and charm, always the consciousness of an effort to secure not only attention, but even admiration, a consciousness of herself, of her fine manners, and elaborate dress, finer than anything else in St. Rule’s. Now there was nothing of all this about her. Her eyes seemed deepened in their sockets, as if a dozen years had passed over her since she last looked thus at the minister. And she asked him that question as if the date of her son’s birthday was the most tragic of facts, a date which she anticipated with nothing less than despair. “Is it really?” said the perplexed minister. “No, indeed, I did not know.” “And you don’t seem to care either,” she cried, “you don’t care!” Mr. Buchanan looked at her with a suspicious glance, as if presaging some further assault upon his peace. But he said: “I am very glad my young friend has come to such a pleasant age. Everything has gone well with him hitherto, and he has come creditably through what may be called the most perilous portion of his youth. He has now a little experience, and power of discrimination, and I see no reason to fear but that things will go as well with him in the future, as they seem----” “Oh,” cried Mrs. Mowbray, raising her clasped hands with a gesture of despair, “is that all you have got to say, just what any old woman might say! And what about me, Mr. Buchanan, what about me?” “You!” he cried, rather harshly, for to be called an old woman is enough to upset the patience of any man. “I don’t know what there is to think of about you, except the satisfaction you must have in seeing Frank----” She stamped her foot upon the floor; her eyes, which looked so hollow and tragic, flamed up for a moment in wrath. “Oh, Frank, Frank! as if it were only Frank!” She paused a moment, and then began again drawing a long breath. “I came to you in my despair. If you can help me, I know not, or if any one can help me. It is that, or the pierhead, or the Spindle rock, where a poor creature might slip in, and it would be thought an accident, and she would never be heard of more.” “Mrs. Mowbray! For God’s sake, what do you mean?”