If he had dreamed that it was past tea-time, on this unlucky night, he would never have thought of asking Mercy to go in and see his mother.

But he did not; and it was with a bright and eager face that he threw open the door, and said in the most cordial tone,-- "Mother, I have brought Mrs.Philbrick to see you." "How do you do, Mrs.Philbrick ?" was the rejoinder, in a tone and with a look so chilling that poor Mercy's heart sank within her.

She had all along had an ideal in her own mind of the invalid old lady, Mr.White's mother, to whom she was to be very good, and who was to be her mother's companion.

She pictured her as her own mother would be, a good deal older and feebler, in a gentle, receptive, patient old age.

Of so repellent, aggressive, unlovely an old woman as this she had had no conception.