watch that bright, fresh young manhood, and recollect how few years
had passed since he had been such another, nor did he like to have
any nurse save Clarence. His wife at first acquiesced, holding fast
to the theory of the periodical autumnal fever, and then that the
operation would restore him to health; and as her presence fretted
him, and he received her small attentions peevishly, she persisted
in her usual habits, and heard with petulance his brothers'
assurances of his being in a critical condition, declaring that it
was always thus with these fevers--he was always cross and low-
spirited, and no one could tell what she had undergone with him.

Then came days of positive pain, and nights of delirious, dreary
murmuring about home and all of us, more especially Ellen Fordyce.
Clarence had no time for letters, and Martyn's became a call for
mamma, with the old childish trust in her healing and comforting
powers, declaring that he would meet her at Cologne, and steer her
through the difficulties of foreign travel.

Hesitation was over now. My father was most anxious to send her,
and she set forth, secure that she could infuse life, energy, and
resolution into her son, when those two poor boys had failed.

It was not, however, Martyn who met her, but his friend Thomson,
with the tidings that the suffering had become so severe as to
prevent Martyn from leaving Baden, not only on his brother's
account, but because Lady Peacock had at last taken alarm, and was
so uncontrollable in her distress that he was needed to keep her out
of the sickroom, where her presence, poor thing, only did mischief.

She evidently had a certain affection for her husband; and it was