something for him even now; yet hitherto it had won him nothing but friendships of doubtful value, one of which, indeed, had just done him infinite hurt.  Were girls with fortunes, then, as prudent and calculating as those who were penniless, as she had been?  It did not strike her that they were infinitely more unapproachable; or rather, such was her estimation of her son’s attractions, that she thought he had only to be seen in his opera-stall to become the magnet of every female heart.  Had she been mistaken altogether in her plan for his future?

As she sat over the dropping embers of the fire, while the ceaseless rain huddled against the pane without, a terrible vision crossed her mind.  She saw her son, no longer young, wan with dissipation and excess, peevish and fretting for the luxuries which she herself, old and decrepit, could no longer procure for him.  She even heard a voice reproaching her as the cause of their common ruin:  “Why did you humor me, woman, when I should have been corrected?  Why did you bring me up to beggary, as though I had been a prince? why have taught me nothing whereby I could now at least earn my daily bread?  Why did you let me lavish in my youth the money which, frugally husbanded, might now have supported us in comfort?  Why did you do all this—­you who were so boastful of your worldly wisdom?” For a moment, so great was her mental anguish, that she almost looked her age—­not that the picture had any terrors for herself, but upon her son’s account alone.  She may not have been penitent, as good folks are, but her heart was full of another’s woe, and had no room left for one selfish regret.  She had (in her vision) ruined both; but it was only for dear Dick that her tears fell.  If the guardian angel, which is said to watch for a time by every one of us, had not given up his disappointing vigil at poor Mrs. Yorke’s elbow, a tremor of delight then stirred him limb and wing.  Nay, perhaps in the Great Day, when all our plans shall be scrutinized, whether they have been carried out or not, this poor, impotent, fallacious one, which worldly Mrs. Yorke had formed for her son’s future, will stand, perchance, when others which recommend themselves better to human eyes have toppled down, because built on the rotten foundations of self.  There will certainly be many worse ones.  She did not propose to sell her offspring, as match-making mothers do, to evil bidders.  In her doting thought her Dick would make any woman happy as his wife.  At all events, right or wrong, judicious or otherwise, her scheme must now be adhered to:  it was too late to take up with any other.  The vision of its failure had faded away, and she could think the matter out with her usual calmness.

The gray dawn creeping through the shutter-chinks found her thinking still; but ere the dull sounds of awakening life were heard above stairs, and before the coming of the sleepy, slatternly maid to “do the parlor,” Mrs. York had arrived at her conclusion.