hand.

'A flower sent to her by a lady who was so kind,' he tremblingly
explains, 'one that he loves so dearly!'

It is the lily, the emblem of purity. She takes it from him, lays it on
the table behind her, out of sight, a sullen glow of resentment at the
gift mingling with the sorrow of her face as she does so. What mother
had fathomed her shameful secret, and dared to send her child to her
with a gift like that? Some one that is fast gaining the place she
should have occupied in his heart! One that is fast winning away from
her the love she so much needs to aid her in the desired reformation.
She notes how the little face softens and brightens when he speaks of
her, and a sharp pang of jealousy shoots through her heart. The fact
that she has never sought to win that heart to herself by kindness, that
she has forfeited her child's respect, and never deserved its love, only
increases her resentment and adds poignancy to the pang. She feels the
slight form start and shiver with a strange, fearful repulsion as she
places it on her lap. Would the strong natural affection nature had
implanted there, so cruelly crushed out, now nearly if not quite dead,
arise anew to life, and grow stronger than this repulsion? That is the
question to be answered _now_. Ah! if there were but a spark remaining,
were it only a poor, feeble, smouldering flame, it would have the power,
she felt, to light her to higher and better things. With a thrill of
pure maternal love, a stranger to her heart, whose holiest impulses,
deadened by reckless indulgence, have degenerated into instincts, she
folds the little form closer to her, in spite of its shuddering, and,
looking into the upturned face (O mother, miserably blind), reads
understandingly for the first time the hunger of heart so legibly
written on every speaking feature. With the sharp arrow of conviction
that pierces her soul at the sight, comes a voice appealing to its
inmost recesses, a voice speaking those words spoken by the great heart
of Divine Compassion, eighteen hundred years ago; those words of
tenderest pleading: _'Feed my lambs!_' How had she fed those committed
to her charge? The wan, thin, sorrowful face, the little heart finding
no joy in life, grown weary before its time, best answer that question.
Aided by her aroused spiritual perceptions, she reads now all too
truthfully the sad, sad record of the heart-breaking loneliness of the
life she has made desolate; and, pressing