grand big woman, and a handsome; with a
life, and a spirit, and a will in her, that is not
often seen: a woman of the sort who can
say, We will do this thing, or that thing
—and do it in the spite and face of all the
scruples, all the obstacles, all the oppositions
in the world. To this lady there comes
for maid to wait on her, Sarah, my niece,
—a young girl, then, pretty, and kind, and
gentle, and very, very shy. Out of many
others who want the place, and who are
bolder and bigger and quicker girls, Mistress
Treverton, nevertheless, picks Sarah. This
is strange, but it is stranger yet, that Sarah,
on her part, when she comes out of her first
fears, and doubts, and pains of shyness about
herself, gets to be fond with all her heart of
that grand and handsome mistress, who has
a life, and a spirit, and a will of the sort that
is not often seen. This is strange to say, but
it is also, as I know from Sarah's own lips,
every word of it true."

"True beyond a doubt," said Leonard.
"Most of the strong attachments in the
world are formed between people who are
unlike each other."

"So the life they led in that ancient house
of Porthgenna began happily for them all,"
continued the old man. " The love that the
mistress had for her husband was so full in
her heart, that it overflowed in kindness to
everybody who was about her, and to Sarah,
her maid, before all the rest. She would
have nobody but Sarah to read to her, to
work for her, to dress her in the morning
and the evening, and to undress her at night.
She was as familiar as a sister might have
been with Sarah, when they two were alone,
in the long days of rain. It was the game of
her idle time—the laugh that she liked most
—to astonish the poor country maid, who
had never so much as seen what a theatre's
inside was like, by dressing in fine clothes,
and painting her face, and speaking and doing
all that she had done on the theatre-scene, in
the days that were before her marriage. The
more she startled and puzzled Sarah with
these jokes and pranks of masquerade, the
better she was always pleased. For a year
this easy, happy life went on in the ancient
house,—happy for all the servants,—happier
still for the master and mistress, but for the
want of one thing to make the whole
complete, one little blessing, that was always
hoped for, and that never came—the same, if
you please, as the blessing in the long white
frock, with the plump delicate face and the
tiny arms, that I see before me now."

He paused, to point the allusion by
nodding and smiling at the child in Rosamond's
lap; then resumed.

"As the new year gets on," he said, " Sarah
sees in the mistress a change. The good
sea-captain is a man who loves children, and is
fond of getting to the house all the little
boys and girls of his friends round about.
He plays with them, he kisses them, he
makes them presents—he is the best friend
the little boys and girls have ever had. The
mistress, who should be their best friend too,
looks on and says nothing; looks on, red
sometimes, and sometimes pale; goes away
into her room where Sarah is at work for
her, and walks about, and finds fault; and
one day lets the evil temper fly out of
her at her tongue, and says " Why have I got
no child for my husband to be fond of? Why
must he kiss and play always with the children
of other women? They take his love away
for something that is not mine. I hate
those children and their mothers too! ' It is
her passion that speaks then, but it speaks
what is near the truth for all that. She will
not make friends with any of these mothers;
the ladies she is familiar-fond with, are the
the ladies who have no children, or the ladies
whose families are all up-grown. You think
that was wrong of the mistress?"

He put the question to Rosamond, who was
toying thoughtfully with one of the baby's
hands which was resting in her's. " I think
Mrs. Treverton was very much to be pitied,"
she answered, gently lifting the child's hand
to her lips.

"Then I, for my part, think so too," said
Uncle Joseph. " To be pitied?—yes! To be
more pitied some months after, when there is
still no child and no hope of a child, and the
good sea-captain says, one day, ' I rust here,
I get old with much idleness, I want to be on
the sea again. I shall ask for a ship.' And
he asks for a ship, and they give it him, and
he goes away on his cruises—with much
kissing and fondness at parting from his wife—
but still he goes away. And when he is gone,
the mistress comes in again where Sarah is
at work for her on a fine new gown, and
snatches it away, and casts it down on the
floor, and throws after it all the fine jewels
she has got on her table, and stamps and cries
with the misery and the passion that is in
her. ' I would give all those fine things, and
go in rags for the rest of my life to have a
child! ' she says. ' I am losing my husband's
love; he would never have gone away from
me if I had brought him a child! ' Then she
looks in the glass, and says between her teeth,
' yes! yes! I am a fine woman with a fine
figure, and I would change places with the
ugliest, crookedest wretch in all creation, if I
could only have a child! ' And then she
tells Sarah that the captain's brother spoke
the vilest of all vile words of her, when she
was married, because she was an artist on the
stage; and she says, 'If I have no child,
who but he—the rascal-monster that I wish
I could kill!—who but he will come to possess
all that the captain has got?" And then she cries
again, and says, ' I am losing his love—ah, I
know it, I know it!—I am losing his love! '
Nothing that Sarah can say will alter her
thoughts about tliat. And the months go on,
and the sea-captain comes back, and still
there is always the same secret grief growing