ed
slowly and heavily from the place, up the stairs, and the door of her
own room banged behind her and hasped like the bolt of a dungeon.

I drank the glass of wine Mary brought me, and tried hard not to sadden
them, and to be a woman.

"Poor thing!" said Margray, when she'd taken off my bonnet and looked at
the fashion of my frock, "but you're sorely altered. Never fret,--it's
worth no tear; she counted much on your likely looks, though,--you never
told us the accident took them."

"I thought you'd know, Margray."

"Oh, for sure, there's many escapes.--And this is grenadine? I'd rather
have the old mohair.--Well, well, give a man luck and throw him into the
sea; happen you'll do better than us all. If my mother cannot marry you
as she'd choose, you'll come to less grief, I doubt." And Margray heaved
a little sigh, and ran to tumble up her two-year-old from his rose-lined
basket.

I went home with Margray that night; I couldn't bear to sleep in the
little white bed that was mine when a happy child, and with every star
that rose I felt a year the older; and on the morrow, when I came home,
my mother was still in the same taking, so I went back again and whiled
the day off as I could; and it was not so hard, for Mary Strathsay came
over, and Effie, and there was so much to tell, and so much to ask, and
Effie had all along been so full of some grand company she had met that
last year in Edinboro', that the dinner-bells rang ere we thought of
lunch; but still a weight lay on me like a crime on conscience. But by
the next dawning I judged 't was best that I should gather courage and
settle things as they were to be. Margray's grounds joined our own, and
I snatched up the babe, a great white Scotch bairn, and went along with
him in my arms under the dripping orchard-boughs, where still the soft
glooms lingered in the early morn. And just ere I reached the wicket, a
heavy step on the garden-walk beyond made my heart plunge, and I came
face to face with my mother. My tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, I
did not dare glance up, yet I felt her eyes upon me as if she searched
some spot fit for her fine lips, and presently her hand was on my head,
and the kiss had fallen on my hair, and then she gathered me into her
arms, and her tears rained down and anointed my face like chrism. And I
just let the wondering wean slip to the grass, and I threw my arms about
her and cried, "Oh, mother, mother, forgive me, and love me just