as the
assistant of old Dr. Walker, Mrs. Carr's family physician, who never
went out at night since he had passed his seventieth birthday.
Gabriella, who liked him because he was not anecdotal and gave small
doses of medicine, hastily led the way to her mother's room before she
ran back to meet Charley Gracey at the door of the dark parlour.

"You can't see her now. The doctor is with her," she whispered. "I'll
make a light in here and you can wait."

"Let me," said Charley, quite as pleasantly as if he were not a bad
husband, while he found a match and struck it on the sole of his foot.
Then, as the gas flared up, he exclaimed, with a low whistle, "By Jove,
you're a sight, Gabriella!"

"Well, it's your fault," replied Gabriella sharply, letting him see, as
she told herself, exactly what she thought of him. "You've made Jane so
ill we thought she was dying."

"I'm sorry for that," he said, suddenly smitten with gravity. "Is she
really so bad?"

His charming freckled face, with its irrepressible humour, grew almost
grotesquely solemn, while the habitual merriment faded slowly from his
light-gray eyes, leaving them empty of expression. He was a short,
rather thick-set man, not particularly good-looking, not particularly
clever, but possessing a singular, if unaccountable, charm. Everybody
liked Charley, though nobody respected him. He was a scamp, but a
lovable scamp, while Jane, with the best intentions in the world, had
managed to make every virtue unattractive. When people condemned him,
they said that he was "utterly unprincipled"; when they softened in
their judgment, they admitted that he had "the best heart in the world."

"I suppose it isn't any worse than other attacks," answered Gabriella,
"but you know what they are like."

"Yes, I know," replied Charley. "Oh, Lord, don't I?"

"She asked mother to send for you," continued Gabriella. "She wants you
to know that she has forgiven you."

"Has she?" said Charley, without elation. Turning away, he stared for a
minute o

Martha Finley (1828 - 1909) was a teacher and author of numerous works, the most well known being the 28 volume Elsie Dinsmore series which was published over a span of 38 years. The daughter of Presbyterian minister Dr. James Brown Finley and his wife and cousin Maria Theresa Brown Finley, she was born on April 26th, 1828 in Chillicothe, Ohio. Finley wrote many of her books under the psodonym Martha Farquharson. She died in 1909 in Elkton, Maryland, where she moved in 1876.

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