“Oh yes,” she said; “thank him; I am sorry I was so silly.”

“He wants me to dine there to-night, mother, to meet Mr. Rowse and Mr. Wakefield,” said Allen, with a certain importance suited to a lad of fifteen, who had just become “somebody.”

“Very well,” she said, in weary acquiescence, as she lay down again, just enough refreshed by the coffee to become sleepy.

“And mother,” said Allen, lingering in the dark, “don’t trouble about Elfie.  I shall marry her as soon as I am of age, and that will make all straight.”

Her stunned sleepiness was scarcely alive to this magnanimous announcement, and she dreamily said—-

“Time enough to think of such things.”

“I know,” said Allen; “but I thought you ought to know this.”

He looked wistfully for another word on this great avowal, but she was really too much stupefied to enter into the purport of the boy’s words, and soon after he left her she fell sound asleep.  She had a curious dream, which she remembered long after.  She seemed to have identified herself with King Midas, and to be touching all her children, who turned into hard, cold, solid golden statues fixed on pedestals in the Belforest gardens, where she wandered about, vainly calling them.  Then her husband’s voice, sad and reproachful, seemed to say, “Magnum Bonum!  Magnum Bonum!” and she fancied it the elixir which alone could restore them, and would have climbed a mountain in search of it, as in the Arabian tale; but her feet were cold, heavy, and immovable, and she found that they too had become gold, and that the chill was creeping upwards.  With a scream of “Save the children, Joe,” she awoke.

No wonder she had dreamt of cold golden limbs, for her feet were really chilly as ice, and the room as dark as at midnight.  However it was not yet seven o’clock; and presently Janet brought a light, and persuaded her to come downstairs and warm herself.  She was not yet capable of going into the dining-room to the family tea, but crept down to lie on the sofa in the drawing-room; and there, after taking the small refreshment which was all she could yet endure, she lay with closed eyes, while the children came in from the meal.  Armine and Babie were the first.  She knew they were looking at her, but was too weary to exert herself to speak to them.

“Asleep,” they whispered.  “Poor Mother Carey.”

“Armie,” said Babie, “is mother unhappy because she has got rich?”

Armine hesitated.  His brief experience of school had made him less unsophisticated, and he seldom talked in his own peculiar fashion even to his little sister, and she added—-

“Must people get wicked when they are rich?”

“Mother is always good,” said faithful little Armine.

“The rich people in the Bible were all bad,” pondered Babie.  “There was Dives, and the man with the barns.”

“Yes,” said Armine; “but there were good ones too—-Abraham and Solomon.”