"Can't you speak, Stephen?" she would exclaim.

"What would be the use, mother?" he would say sadly. "If you do not know
that the great aim of my life is to make you happy, it is of no use for me
to keep on saying it. If it would make you any happier to keep on
discussing and discussing this question indefinitely, I would endure even
that; but it would not."

To do Mrs. White justice, she was generally ashamed of these ebullitions
of unreasonable ill-temper, and endeavored to atone for them afterward by
being more than ordinarily affectionate and loving in her manner towards
Stephen. But her shame was short-lived, and never made her any the less
unreasonable or exacting when the next occasion occurred; so that,
although Stephen received her affectionate epithets and caresses with
filial responsiveness, he was never in the slightest degree deluded by
them. He took them for what they were worth, and held himself no whit
freer from constraint, no whit less ready for the next storm. By the very
fact of the greater fineness of his organization, this tyrannical woman
held him chained. His submission to her would have seemed abject, if it
had not been based on a sentiment and grounded in a loyalty which
compelled respect. He had accepted this burden as the one great duty of
his life; and, whatever became of him, whatever became of his life, the
burden should be carried. This helpless woman, who stood to him in the
relation of mother, should be made happy. From the moment of his father's
death, he had assumed this obligation as a sacrament; and, if it lasted
his life out, he would never dream of evading or lessening it. In this
fine fibre of loyalty, Stephen White and Mercy Philbrick were alike:
though it was in him more an exalted sentiment; in her, simply an organic
necessity. In him, it would always have been in danger of taking morbid
shapes and phases; of being over-ridden and distorted at any time by