ely from her own family, in which she had never known either a
brother or a sister; and the burden of her marriage with an old man had
been brightened to her by the possession of an only child,--of one
daughter, who had been the lamp of her life, the solitary delight of her
heart, the single relief to the otherwise solitary tedium of her
monotonous existence. She had, indeed attended to the religious training
of her girl with constant care;--but the yearnings of her maternal heart
had softened even her religion, so that the laws, and dogmas, and texts,
and exercises by which her husband was oppressed, and her servants
afflicted, had been made lighter for Hester,--sometimes not without
pangs of conscience on the part of the self-convicted parent. She had
known, as well as other mothers, how to gloat over the sweet charms of
the one thing which in all the world had been quite her own. She had
revelled in kisses and soft touches. Her Hester's garments had been a
delight to her, till she had taught herself to think that though
sackcloth and ashes were the proper wear for herself and her husband,
nothing was too soft, too silken, too delicate for her little girl. The
roses in the garden, and the goldfish in the bowl, and the pet spaniel,
had been there because such surroundings had been needed for the
joyousness of her girl. And the theological hardness of the literature
of the house had been somewhat mitigated as Hester grew into reading, so
that Watt was occasionally relieved by Wordsworth, and Thomson's
'Seasons' was alternated with George Withers's 'Hallelujah.'

Then had come, first the idea of the marriage, and, immediately
consequent upon the idea, the marriage itself. The story of that has
been told, but the reader has perhaps hardly been made to understand the
utter bereavement which it brought on the mother. It is natural that the
adult bird should delight to leave the family nest, and that the mother
bird should have its heart-strings torn by the separation. It must be
so, alas! even when the divulsions are made in the happiest manner. But
here the tearing away had nothing in it to reconcile the mother. She was
suddenly told that her daughter was to be no longer her own. Her
step-son had interfered and her husband had become powerful over her
with a sudden obstinacy. She had had no hand in the choice. She would
fain have postponed any choice, and would then fain have herself made
the choice. But a man was brought w