did with a deep sense of responsibility. Now it
loomed by degrees upon her aching heart that Dolly's verdict would
in almost every case be a hostile one. The daughter was growing
old enough to question and criticise her mother's proceedings; she
was beginning to understand that some mysterious difference marked
off her own uncertain position in life from the solid position of
the children who surrounded her--the children born under those
special circumstances which alone the man-made law chooses to stamp
with the seal of its recognition. Dolly's curiosity was shyly
aroused as to her dead father's family. Herminia had done her best
to prepare betimes for this inevitable result by setting before her
child, as soon as she could understand it, the true moral doctrine
as to the duties of parenthood. But Dolly's own development
rendered all such steps futile. There is no more silly and
persistent error than the belief of parents that they can influence
to any appreciable extent the moral ideas and impulses of their
children. These things have their springs in the bases of
character: they are the flower of individuality; and they cannot be
altered or affected after birth by the foolishness of preaching.
Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, you
will find soon enough he will choose his own course for himself and
depart from it.

Already when Dolly was a toddling little mite and met her mother's
father in the church in Marylebone, it had struck her as odd that
while they themselves were so poor and ill-clad, her grandpapa
should be such a grand old gentleman of such a dignified aspect.
As she grew older and older, and began to understand a little more
the world she lived in, she wondered yet more profoundly how it
could happen, if her grandpapa was indeed the Very Reverend, the
Dean of Dunwich, that her mamma should be an outcast from her
father's church, and scarcely well seen in the best carriage
company. She had learnt that deans are rather grand people--almost
as much so as admirals; that they wear shovel-hats to distinguish
them from the common ruck of rectors; that they lived in fine
houses in a cathedral close; and that they drive in a victoria with
a coachman in livery. So much essential knowledge of the church of
Christ she had gained for herself by personal observation; for
facts like these were what interested Dolly. She couldn't
understand, then, why she and her mother should live