her--and another. Surely the mother hears that cry--'O Robert!
pity! pity!'

Poor grey-haired woman! Was it for this you suffered a mother's pangs in
your lone widowhood five-and-thirty years ago? Was it for this you kept
the little worn morocco shoes Janet had first run in, and kissed them day
by day when she was away from you, a tall girl at school? Was it for this
you looked proudly at her when she came back to you in her rich pale
beauty, like a tall white arum that has just unfolded its grand pure
curves to the sun?

The mother lies sleepless and praying in her lonely house, weeping the
difficult tears of age, because she dreads this may be a cruel night for
her child.

She too has a picture over her mantelpiece, drawn in chalk by Janet long
years ago. She looked at it before she went to bed. It is a head bowed
beneath a cross, and wearing a crown of thorns.

Chapter 5

It was half-past nine o'clock in the morning. The midsummer sun was
already warm on the roofs and weathercocks of Milby. The church-bells
were ringing, and many families were conscious of Sunday sensations,
chiefly referable to the fact that the daughters had come down to
breakfast in their best frocks, and with their hair particularly well
dressed. For it was not Sunday, but Wednesday; and though the Bishop was
going to hold a Confirmation, and to decide whether or not there should
be a Sunday evening lecture in Milby, the sunbeams had the usual
working-day look to the haymakers already long out in the fields, and to
laggard weavers just 'setting up' their week's 'piece'. The notion of its
being Sunday was the strongest in young ladies like Miss Phipps, who was
going to accompany her younger sister to the confirmation, and to wear a
'sweetly pretty' transparent bonnet with marabout feathers on the
interesting occasion, thus throwing into relief the suitable simplicity
of her sister's attire, who was, of course, to appear in a new white
frock; or in the pupils at Miss Townley's, who were absolved from all
lessons, and were going to church to see the Bishop, and to hear the
Honourable and Reverend Mr. Prendergast, the rector, read prayers--a high
intellectual treat, as Miss Townley assured them. It seemed only natural
that a rector, who was honourable, should read better than old Mr. Crewe,
who was only a curate, and not honourable; and when little Clara Robins
wondered why some clergymen were rectors and others not, Ellen Marriott
assu