Not even the joy manifested by George Gaston and Mrs. and Miss Stanbury, or bluff old Mr. Gerald, at the good news of my return, could shake his resolution.

“Miriam shall leave me no more while life is mine,” he said, “be it long or short.  When she marries, I will surrender every thing I possess, save a stipend, into her hands, and Evelyn and Mabel and I to some extent will be her pensioners thereafter.  Until that time, matters will stand as they do now.”

“Folly, folly, Colonel Monfort!  You talk like a dotard of eighty; you, a superb-looking man yet, younger than I am, no doubt; young enough to marry again, if the fancy took you, and head a second family.”

“Why not say a third?” asked my father, sadly.  “Don’t you know, Bainrothe, I am a fatal upas-tree to the wives of my bosom?  See how it has been already.”

“Better luck next time.  Now, there is the Widow Stanbury, willing and waiting, you know, and a dozen others.”

I turned a flashing eye upon him that silenced him.

“You know better than that,” I said, in suppressed tones, hoarse with anger.  “Better let that subject rest hereafter, unless, indeed, your object is feud with me.  You shall not slander my friends with impunity, nor must you come any longer between me and them and my father.”

I spoke, for his ear alone, and waited for no reply.  I understood his game by this time, as he did mine.

“His son, indeed!” I murmured, with a scornful lip, as I found myself alone.  “I would cut off my right hand before I would give it to a Bainrothe,” and I scoffed at him bitterly in the depths of my resentful Judaic heart.

About this time I passed through a painful trial.  It was autumn, and early fires of wood had been kindled in the chambers; more, so far, for the sake of cheerfulness than warmth.  Mabel was playing on the hearth of her nursery preparatory to going to bed, and I was in the adjoining room, my own chamber, making an evening toilet, for Evelyn expected a party of young visitors that night, and my presence had been requested.

Mrs. Austin, it seemed, had left the room for one moment, when a cry from Mabel brought me to her side.  She had fanned the fire with her little cambric night-dress, and was already in a blaze.  I caught Mrs. Austin’s heavy shawl from the bed, and promptly extinguished the flames, but not without receiving serious injury myself.  The child, with the exception of a slight but painful burn on her ankle, was unhurt, but my left arm and shoulder and bosom were fearfully burned, and for some days my life hung on a thread.

Months passed before I was able to leave my own chamber, and the blow to my health was so severe as to induce a return of those lethargic attacks from which I had been entirely free for the last two years.  It is true they were brief in duration compared to those of old, but that they should exist at all was a cause of anxiety and disquietude both to my father and physician.