ep, and her limbs trembled from the
exhaustion of the long June day; but she remembered the punishment of
the afternoon, and as she looked at him her heart seemed melting with
tenderness.

"And you'll promise not to go away until I'm fast asleep?--you'll
promise, mamma?"

"I'll promise, precious. No, you mustn't take your ship to bed with you.
That's a darling."

Then, as Oliver was heard coming softly up the stairs for fear of
arousing the children, she caught Harry's moist hand in hers and stole
with him into the nursery.

To Virginia in the long torrid days of that summer there seemed time for
neither anxiety nor disappointment. Every minute of her eighteen waking
hours was spent in keeping the children washed, dressed, and
good-humoured. She thought of herself so little that it never occurred
to her to reflect whether she was happy or unhappy--hardly, even,
whether she was awake or asleep. Twice a week John Henry's horse carried
Oliver for a ride with Abby and Susan, and on these evenings he stayed
so late that Virginia ceased presently even to make a pretence of
waiting supper. Several times, on September afternoons, when the country
burned with an illusive radiance as if it were seen through a mirage,
she put on her old riding-habit, which she had hunted up in the attic at
the rectory, and mounting one of Abby's horses, started to accompany
them; but her conscience reproached her so bitterly at the thought that
she was seeking pleasure away from the children, that she hurried
homeward across the fields before the others were ready to turn. As with
most women who are born for motherhood, that supreme fact had not only
absorbed the emotional energy of her girlhood, but had consumed in its
ecstatic flame even her ordinary capacities for enjoyment. While
fatherhood left Oliver still a prey to dreams and disappointments, the
more exclusive maternal passion rendered Virginia profoundly indifferent
to every aspect of life except the intimate personal aspect of her
marriage. She couldn't be happy--she couldn't even be at ease--while she
remembered that the children were left to the honest, yet hardly tender,
mercies of Marthy.

"I shall never go again," she thought, as she slipped from her saddle at
the gate, and, catching up her long riding-skirt, ran up the short walk
to the steps. "I must be getting old. Something has gone out of me."

And there was no regret in her heart for this _something_ which had fled
out