and weeping like a sorrowing child, while the arms she had
flung round her cousin's neck prevented Rose from moving. Their tears
once more mingled, as they had often done in childhood--once more--but
not for long.

"Leave me alone for a little, and I will ring for my maid," she said
at last; "I am too artificial to be waited upon by you, Rose. It was
otherwise when you used to twine gay poppies and bright flowers in my
hair, telling me, at the same time, how much wiser it would have been
to have chosen the less fading and more fragrant ones."

"Her husband--and her children!" thought Helen; "if she had neither
children nor husband, she would have been of such value to me now;
noisy children, I dare say, troublesome and wearying. Native air!
native air, indeed, _ought_ to work wonders." It would be hardly
credited that Helen--the beauty--the admired--the woman of
rank--bestowed quite as much trouble upon her morning toilette as
if she had been in London. Such was her aching passion for universal
sway, that she could not bear to be thought faded by her old lover,
though he was only a farmer; and this trouble was taken despite bodily
pain that would have worn a strong man to a skeleton.

It would be difficult to say whether Helen was pleased or displeased
at finding Edward Lynne what might, without any flattery, be termed a
country gentleman, betraying no emotion whatever at the sight of one
who had caused him so much suffering, and only anxious to gratify her
because she was his wife's relative. She thought, and she was right,
that she discovered pity, and not admiration, as he looked upon her.

"You think me changed," she said.

"Your ladyship has been ill and harassed."

"Ah! we all change except Rose."

"Ah!" replied the country bred husband, "she, indeed, is an exception;
she could not even change for the better."

And then the children, two such glorious boys, fine, manly fellows.
"And what will you be?" inquired her ladyship of the eldest.

"A farmer, my lady."

"And you?"

"A merchant, I hope."

"Your boys are as unambitious as yourself, Rose."

"I fear not," she answered; "this fellow wants to get into the middle
class; but Mr. Stokes says the prosperity of a country depends more
upon the middle class than upon either the high or the low."

To this Helen made no reply, for her attention was occupied by
the loveliness of Rose's little girl. The child inherited, in
its perfection, the beauty of he