“Oh, yes, he has a sister,” they would say, “much older than Austin--who looks as if she would like to turn us all out, and keep her darling at her apron-string.” “You must remember she has had the nursing of him all his life,” a more charitable neighbor would suggest by way of excusing the middle-aged sister. “But women ought to know that a man is not to be always lounging about pleasing them, and not himself. Hang it all, what would they have? I wonder Austin don’t send her home. It is the best place for her.” This was how the friends commented upon Reine. And Reine did not know that even to be called Austin was refreshing to the invalid lad, showing him that he was at least on equal terms with somebody; and that the sense of independence intoxicated him, so that he did not know how to enjoy it enough--to take draughts full enough and deep enough of the delightful pleasure of being his own master, of meeting the night air without a muffler, and going home late in sheer bravado, to show that he was an invalid no more. After this first change, which chilled her and made her life so lonely, another change came upon Reine. She had been used to be anxious about Herbert all her life, and now another kind of anxiety seized her, which a great many women know very well, and which with many becomes a great and terrible passion, ravaging secretly their very lives. Fear for his health slid imperceptibly in her loneliness into fear for him. Does the reader know the difference? She was a very ignorant, foolish girl: she did not know anything about the amusements and pleasures of young men. When her brother came in slightly flushed and flighty, with some excitement in his looks, parting loudly with his friends at the door, smelling of cigars and wine, a little rough, a little noisy, poor Reine thought he was plunging into some terrible whirlpool of dissipation, such as she had read of in books; and, as she was of the kind of woman who is subject to its assaults, the vulture came down upon her, there and then, and began to gnaw at her heart. In those long evenings when she sat alone waiting for him, the legendary Spartan with the fox under his cloak was nothing to Reine. She kept quite still over her book, and read page after page, without knowing a word she was reading, but heard the pitiful little clock on the mantel-piece chime the hours, and every step and voice outside, and every sound within, with painful acuteness, as if she were all ear; and felt her heart beat all over her--in her throat, in her ears, stifling her and stopping her breath. She did not form any idea to herself of how Herbert might be passing his time; she would not let her thoughts accuse him of anything, for, indeed, she was too innocent to imagine those horrors which women often do imagine. She sat in an agony of listening, waiting for him, wondering how he would look when he returned--wondering if this was he, with a renewed crisis