well used. "You would n't have time to die here. And we want to give this
hydropathic treatment a fair trial. You've tried the douche, and now
you're to have the pack." He summoned two of the boatmen, who had been
considerately dripping outside, in order to leave the interior to the
shipwrecked company, and they lifted Mrs. Maynard, finally wrapped in,
Grace's India-rubber cloak, and looking like some sort of strange, huge
chrysalis, and carried her out into the storm and up the steps.

Grace followed last with Mr. Libby, very heavyhearted and reckless. She
had not only that sore self-accusal; but the degradation of the affair,
its grotesqueness, its spiritual squalor, its utter gracelessness, its
entire want of dignity, were bitter as death in her proud soul. It was
not in this shameful guise that she had foreseen the good she was to do.
And it had all come through her own wilfulness and self-righteousness.
The tears could mix unseen with the rain that drenched her face, but they
blinded her, and half-way up the steps she stumbled on her skirt, and
would have fallen, if the young man had not caught her. After that, from
time to time he put his arm about her, and stayed her against the gusts.

Before they reached the top he said, "Miss Breen, I'm awfully sorry for
all this. Mrs. Maynard will be ashamed of what she said. Confound it! If
Maynard were only here!"

"Why should she be ashamed?" demanded Grace. "If she had been drowned, I
should have murdered her, and I'm responsible if anything happens to
her,--I am to blame." She escaped from him, and ran into the house. He
slunk round the piazza to the kitchen door, under the eyes of the ladies
watching at the parlor windows.

"I wonder he let the others carry her up," said Miss Gleason. "Of course,