ure framed a beautiful
landscape, a quiet homestead in the midst of rich, green meadows; and
Lillian told him, with a smile, that was the Elms, at Knutsford, "where
mamma lived."

Lionel was too true a gentleman to ask why she lived there; he praised
the painting, and then turned the subject.

As Lady Earle foresaw, the time had arrived when Dora's children partly
understood there was a division in the family, a breach never to be
healed. "Mamma was quite different from papa," they said to each
other; and Lady Helena told them their mother did not like fashion and
gayety, that she had been simply brought up, used always to quietness
and solitude, so that in all probability she would never come to
Earlescourt.

But as time went on, and Beatrice began to understand more of the great
world, she had an instinctive idea of the truth. It came to her by
slow degrees. Her father had married beneath him, and her mother had
no home in the stately hall of Earlescourt. At first violent
indignation seized her; then calmer reflection told her she could not
judge correctly. She did not know whether Lord Earle had left his
wife, or whether her mother had refused to live with him.

It was the first cloud that shadowed the life of Lord Earle's beautiful
daughter. The discovery did not diminish her love for the quiet, sad
mother, whose youth and beauty had faded so soon. If possible, she
loved her more; there was a pitying tenderness in her affection.

"Poor mamma!" thought the young girl--"poor, gentle mamma! I must be
doubly kind to her, and love her better than ever."

Dora did not understand how it happened that her beautiful Beatrice
wrote so constantly and so fondly to her--how it happened that week
after week costly presents found their way to the Elms.

"The child must spend all her pocket money on me," she said to herself.
"How well and dearly she loves me--my beautiful Beatrice!"

Lady Helena remembered the depth of her mother's love. She pitied the
lonely, unloved wife, deprived of husband and children. She did all in
her power to console her. She wrote long letters, telling Dora how
greatly her children were admired, and how she would like their mother
to witness their triumph. She told how many conquests Beatrice had
made; how the proud and exclusive Lord Airlie was always near her, and
that Beatrice, of her own fancy, liked him better than any one else.

"Neither Lord Earle nor myself could wish a more br