d, since there had ceased to be anything hidden between
them. Previously Lady Mason had felt, and had occasionally expressed
the feeling, that she was hardly fit to associate on equal terms with
Mrs. Orme; but now there was none of this,--now, as they sat together
for hours and hours, they spoke, and argued, and lived together as
though they were equal. But nevertheless, could she have shown her
love by any great deed, there was nothing which Lady Mason would not
have done for Mrs. Orme.

She was now left alone, and according to her daily custom would
remain there till the servant told her that Mr. Lucius was waiting
for her in the dining-room. In an early part of this story I have
endeavoured to describe how this woman sat alone, with deep sorrow in
her heart and deep thought on her mind, when she first learned what
terrible things were coming on her. The idea, however, which the
reader will have conceived of her as she sat there will have come
to him from the skill of the artist, and not from the words of the
writer. If that drawing is now near him, let him go back to it. Lady
Mason was again sitting in the same room--that pleasant room, looking
out through the verandah on to the sloping lawn, and in the same
chair; one hand again rested open on the arm of the chair, while the
other supported her face as she leaned upon her elbow; and the sorrow
was still in her heart, and the deep thought in her mind. But the
lines of her face were altered, and the spirit expressed by it was
changed. There was less of beauty, less of charm, less of softness;
but in spite of all that she had gone through there was more of
strength,--more of the power to resist all that this world could do
to her.

It would be wrong to say that she was in any degree a hypocrite. A
man is no more a hypocrite because his manner and gait when he is
alone are different from those which he assumes in company, than he
is for wearing a dressing-gown in the morning, whereas he puts on a
black coat in the evening. Lady Mason in the present crisis of her
life endeavoured to be true in all her dealings with Mrs. Orme; but
nevertheless Mrs. Orme had not yet read her character. As she now sat
thinking of what the morrow would bring upon her,--thinking of all
that the malice of that man Dockwrath had brought upon her,--she
resolved that she would still struggle on with a bold front. It
had been brought home to her that he, her son, the being for whom
her soul had