“The sun is blinding me!” said the unhappy invalid, as she entered the chamber.  “How could you be so careless in arranging the curtains!”

A touch, and the sweet vision which had smiled all so vainly for the poor sufferer, was lost in shadows.  There was a subdued light, and almost pulseless silence in the chamber.

“Do take those flowers away, their odour is dreadful to me!”

A beautiful bouquet of sweet flowers, sent by a sympathizing friend, was removed from the chamber.  Half an hour afterward—­the attendant thought her sleeping—­she exclaimed—­

“Oh, how that does worry me!”

“What worries you, ma’am?” was kindly asked.

“That doll on the mantel.  It is entirely out of place here.  I wish you would remove it.  Oh, dear, dear!  And that toilette-glass—­straighten it, if you please.  I can’t bear any thing crooked.  And there’s Mary’s rigolette on the bureau; the careless child!  She never puts any thing away.”

These little annoyances were removed, and the invalid was quiet again—­externally quiet, but within all was fretfulness and mental pain.

“There come the children from school,” she said, as the ringing of the door-bell and gay voices were heard below.  “You must keep them from my room.  I feel unusually nervous to-day, and my head aches badly.”

Yet, even while she spoke, two little girls came bounding into the room, crying—­

“Oh, mother!  Dear mother!  We’ve got something good to tell you.  Miss Martin says we’ve been two of the best”——­

The attendant’s imperative “H-u-s-h!” and the mother’s hand waving toward the door, the motion enforced by a frowning brow, were successful in silencing the pleased and excited children, who, without being permitted to tell the good news they had brought from school, and which they had fondly believed would prove so pleasant to their mother’s ears, were almost pushed from the chamber.

No matter of surprise is it that a quick revulsion took place in their feelings.  If the voice of wrangling reached, soon after, the mother’s ears, and pained her to the very soul, it lessened not the pressure on her feelings to think that a little self-denial on her part, a little forgetfulness of her own feelings, and a thoughtfulness for them, would have prevented unhappy discord.

And so the day passed; and when evening brought her husband to her bedside, his kind inquiries were answered only by complainings—­complainings that made, from mental reactions, bodily suffering the greater.  For so long a time had this state of things existed that her husband was fast losing his wonted cheerfulness of temper.  He was in no way indifferent to his wife’s condition; few men, in fact, could have sympathized more deeply, or sought with more untiring assiduity to lighten the burden which ill-health had laid upon her.  But, in her case, thought was all turned to self.  It was like the blood flowing back in congestion upon the heart, instead of diffusing itself healthfully over the system.