feeling about anything, Mamma's sickness seemed something entirely
removed from me, something which concerned me not in the least. I was
calm because I felt nothing. I wondered then and wonder now that you
did not find me out, for I knew how unlike I was to my former
self. Then mamma got well, and I was not glad; I went back to New
York, and felt no sorrow at parting with you all.

"But when I got back, oh, Uncle John, I was too late!--too late to do
right, even had I wished it! I don't know,--I made good resolutions on
my way back: Heaven knows if I should have had strength to put them in
practice. But it was all over; not only had I lost Herbert, but he had
lost himself. The first time I saw him he was not himself,--I might as
well say it,--he was drunk.

"There is no need of going through the rest, Uncle,--you will not ask
it. I think I did everything I could;--I threw away my books; I
devoted myself to making his home pleasant to him; never, no, never,
in my girlish days, did I take half the pains to please him that I did
now to win him from himself. I read to him, I sang to him, I filled
the house with people that I knew were to his taste, I dressed for
him, I let myself be admired by others that he might feel proud of me,
might think me more worthy of admiration,--but all to no
purpose. Sometimes I hoped, but more often I despaired; his fall
seemed to me fearfully rapid, though now the three years seem to have
been interminable. At last I had no hope but that of concealing the
truth from you all. You thought me churlish, Kate, in my answer to
your proposal to spend last winter with me? My darling, I dared not
have you in my house. But it is over now. I knew how that last
horrible attack would end when I sent for papa. He had gone through
two before that, and the doctor told me the third would be fatal. Poor