"Other refuge have I none; Hangs my helpless soul on Thee; Leave, ah! leave me not alone, Still support and comfort me." How he wished he could see her face; he felt he _must_ see it! And when she had opened the door and vanished from his view, he rode on slowly, reluctantly, scheming how he might return with some specious reason that would enable him to speak with her. George Coventry was not susceptible. Save for a youthful and hopeless love affair that left no lasting impress on his heart, his life had been exceptionally free from sexual distractions; he was more on his guard against women than actually indifferent to them. Without conceit, he was not wholly unaware that he found favour, generally, with females of his class, the very austereness of his nature provoked and attracted them; but illicit love repelled him, and, so far, since he had been in a position to support a wife, no girl or woman in particular had caught his fancy, though in the abstract he was not averse to the notion of marriage. His ideal of womanhood was modelled on the type represented by his mother and his aunts and his spinster sister, ladies whose sole charm lay in their personal virtue, the keynote of whose lives was duty and devotion to the home. Coventry was an only son, and on the death of his father his mother's whole existence became centred on himself, while Miss Coventry sacrificed youth and pleasure and all outside interests in order that she might minister undividedly to her bereaved parent; and both women remained serenely unconscious of the waste of life and energy and happiness that the sacrifice entailed. The daughter refused a proposal from a worthy gentleman because, she said, she could not leave Mama; and her mother and her brother accepted this decision as only right and proper. The suitor failing to suggest that Mama should also become an inmate of his house, the matter went no further. Such immolation of female youth to age is common and unending, and in the majority of cases the victim lays down her natural rights on the altar of duty with but little conception of the magnitude of the offering, and receives small credit for her martyrdom.