this time as
one of severe calamity, was virtually enjoying her life more than she
had ever done since her daughter's marriage. It seemed that her darling
was brought back to her not merely with all the old affection, but with
a conscious cherishing of her mother's nearness, such as we give to a
possession that we have been on the brink of losing.

"Are you there, mamma?" cried Gwendolen, in the middle of the night (a
bed had been made for her mother in the same room with hers), very much
as she would have done in her early girlhood, if she had felt
frightened in lying awake.

"Yes, dear; can I do anything for you?"

"No, thank you; only I like so to know you are there. Do you mind my
waking you?" (This question would hardly have been Gwendolen's in her
early girlhood.)

"I was not asleep, darling."

"It seemed not real that you were with me. I wanted to make it real. I
can bear things if you are with me. But you must not lie awake, anxious
about me. You must be happy now. You must let me make you happy now at
last--else what shall I do?"

"God bless you, dear; I have the best happiness I can have, when you
make much of me."

But the next night, hearing that she was sighing and restless Mrs.
Davilow said, "Let me give you your sleeping-draught, Gwendolen."

"No, mamma, thank you; I don't want to sleep."

"It would be so good for you to sleep more, my darling."

"Don't say what would be good for me, mamma," Gwendolen answered,
impetuously. "You don't know what would be good for me. You and my
uncle must not contradict me and tell me anything is good for me when I
feel it is not good."

Mrs. Davilow was silent, not wondering that the poor child was
irritable. Presently Gwendolen said--

"I was always naughty to you, mamma."

"No, dear, no."

"Yes, I was," said Gwendolen insistently. "It is because I was always
wicked that I am miserable now."

She burst into sobs and cries. The determination to be silent about all
the facts of her married life and its close, reacted in these escapes
of enigmatic excitement.

But dim lights of interpretation were breaking on the mother's mind
through the information that came from Sir Hugo to Mr. Gascoigne, and,
with some omissions, from Mr. Gascoigne to herself. The good-natured
baronet, while he was attending to all decent measures in relation to
his nephew's death, and the possible washing ashore of the body,
thought it the kindest thing he could do to use his pres