e always so tender with me, mamma, even when I must have grieved
you or disappointed your hopes or your pride. If I were in the way I
never saw it, nor can I remember, of all the looks which have sometimes
puzzled me in your face, one that spoke of impatience or lack of
sympathy with my pleasures or my griefs. With papa it was not always so.
No; don't stop me. You must let me speak of him. Though he has never
been unkind to me, he has a way of frowning at times that frightens me.
Whether he is displeased or simply ill I cannot say, but I have always
felt a dread of papa's presence which I never felt of yours; and yet you
frown, too, at times, though never upon me, mamma, dear--never upon me."

A pause that was filled in by a kiss, and then the tender voice went on:

"You can imagine, then, what a turmoil was aroused in my breast when one
day, while leaning from the window, I saw a face in the street below
that awakened within me such strange feelings I could not communicate
them even to my mother. I who had hitherto confessed to her every
trivial emotion of my life, shrank in a moment, as it were, from
revealing a secret no deeper than that I had looked for one half minute
upon the form of a passing stranger, and in that minute learned more of
my own heart and of the true meaning of life than in all the sixteen
years I had hitherto lived. You have seen him since, and you know he
possesses every grace that can render a man attractive; but to me that
day he did not look like a man at all, or if I thought of him as such, I
thought of him as one who set a pattern to his fellows, while retaining
his own immeasurable superiority. He did not see me. I do not know that
I wished him to. I was quite content to watch him from where I stood,
and note his lordly walk and kindly mien, and dream--oh, what did I
dream that day! The memory of your own girlhood must tell you, mamma. I
did not know his name; I did not suspect his rank; but from his youth I
judged him to be single, from his bearing I knew him to be noble, and
from his look, which called out a reflected brightness on every face he
chanced to pass, I was assured that he was happy and that he was good.
And what does a girl's fancy need more? Still a glimpse so short might
not have had such deep consequences if it had not been followed by an
event which rendered those first impressions indelible."

"An event, Honora?"

"Yes, mamma. You remember the day you sent me with Cecil