`Is it late?' asked Edith, fondly putting back the curls that mingled with her own dark hair, and strayed upon her face.

`Very late. Near day.'

`Near day!' she repeated in surprise.

`Dear Mama, what have you done to your hand?' said Florence.

Edith drew it suddenly away, and, for a moment, looked at her with the same strange dread (there was a sort of wild avoidance in it) as before; but she presently said, `Nothing, nothing. A blow.' And then she said, `My Florence!' and then her bosom heaved, and she was weeping passionately.

`Mama!' said Florence. `Oh Mama, what can I do, what should I do, to make us happier? Is there anything?'

`Nothing,' she replied.

`Are you sure of that? Can it never be? If I speak now of what is in my thoughts, in spite of what we have agreed,' said Florence, `you will not blame me, will you?'

`It is useless,' she replied, `useless. I have told you, dear, that I have had bad dreams. Nothing can change them, or prevent their coming back.'

`I do not understand,' said Florence, gazing on her agitated face, which seemed to darken as she looked.

`I have dreamed,' said Edith in a low voice, `of a pride that is all powerless for good, all powerful for evil; of a pride that has been galled and goaded, through many shameful years, and has never recoiled except upon itself; a pride that has debased its owner with the consciousness of deep humiliation, and never helped its owner boldly to resent it or avoid it, or to say, "This shall not be!" a pride that, rightly guided, might have led perhaps to better things, but which, misdirected and perverted, like all else belonging to the same possessor, has been self-contempt, mere hardihood, and ruin.'

She neither looked nor spoke to Florence now, but went on as if she were alone.

`I have dreamed,' she said, `of such indifference and callousness, arising from this self-contempt; this wretched, inefficient, miserable pride; that it has gone on with listless steps even to the altar, yielding to the old, familiar, beckoning finger,--oh mother, oh mother!--while it spurned it; and willing to be hateful to itself for once and for all, rather than to be stung daily in some new form. Mean, poor thing!'

And now with gathering and darkening emotion, she looked as she had looked when Florence entered.

`And I have dreamed,' she said, `that in a first late effort to achieve a purpose, it has been trodden on, and trodden down by a base foot, but turns and looks upon him. I have dreamed that it is wounded, hunted, set upon by dogs, but that it stands at bay, and will not yield; no, that it cannot if it would; but that it is urged on to hate him, rise against him, and defy him!'

Her clenched hand tightened on the trembling arm she had in hers, and as she looked down on the alarmed and wondering face, her own subsided. `Oh Florence!' she said, `I think I have been nearly mad to-night!' and humbled her proud head upon her neck, and wept again.

`Don't leave me! be near me! I have no hope but in you!' These words she said a score of times.

Soon she grew calmer, and was full of pity for the tears of Florence, and for her waking at such untimely hours. And the day now drawing, Edith folded her in her arms and laid her down upon her bed, and, not lying down herself, sat by her, and bade her try to sleep.