and mother; but each day, with a deeper chill at heart, she asked
herself a thousand times, "Why does not Mr. Arnold come to see me?"

Vinton Arnold was in even greater distress. He had to endure not
only the pain of a repressed affection, but also a galling and
humiliating sense of unmanly weakness. He, of course, learned of the
failure, and his father soon after took pains to say significantly
that one of the members of the iron firm had told him that Mr.
Jocelyn had nothing to fall back upon. Therefore Arnold knew that
the girl he loved must be in sore trouble. And yet, how could he
go to her? What could he say or do that would not make him appear
contemptible in her eyes? But to remain away in her hour of
misfortune seemed such a manifestation of heartless indifference,
such a mean example of the world's tendency to pass by on the other
side, that he grew haggard and ghost-like in his self-reproach and
self-contempt. At last his parents began to insist that his health
required a change of air, and suggested a mountain resort or a trip
abroad, and he was conscious of no power to resist the quiet will
with which any plan decided upon would be carried out. He felt
that he must see Mildred once more, although what he would say to
her he could not tell. While there had been no conscious and definite
purpose on the part of his parents, they nevertheless had trained
him to helplessness in mind and body. His will was as relaxed as
his muscles. Instead of wise, patient effort to develop a feeble
constitution and to educate his mind by systematic courses of study,
he had been treated as an exotic all his days. And yet it had been
care without tenderness, or much manifestation of affection. Hot a
thing had been done to develop self-respect or self-reliance. Even
more than most girls, he was made to feel himself dependent on
his parents. He had studied but little; he had read much, but in