ee Miss
Momperts, under the necessity of showing herself entirely submissive,
and keeping her thoughts to herself. To be a queen disthroned is not so
hard as some other down-stepping: imagine one who had been made to
believe in his own divinity finding all homage withdrawn, and himself
unable to perform a miracle that would recall the homage and restore
his own confidence. Something akin to this illusion and this
helplessness had befallen the poor spoiled child, with the lovely lips
and eyes and the majestic figure--which seemed now to have no magic in
them.

She rose from the low ottoman where she had been sitting purposeless,
and walked up and down the drawing-room, resting her elbow on one palm
while she leaned down her cheek on the other, and a slow tear fell. She
thought, "I have always, ever since I was little, felt that mamma was
not a happy woman; and now I dare say I shall be more unhappy than she
has been."

Her mind dwelt for a few moments on the picture of herself losing her
youth and ceasing to enjoy--not minding whether she did this or that:
but such picturing inevitably brought back the image of her mother.

"Poor mamma! it will be still worse for her now. I can get a little
money for her--that is all I shall care about now." And then with an
entirely new movement of her imagination, she saw her mother getting
quite old and white, and herself no longer young but faded, and their
two faces meeting still with memory and love, and she knowing what was
in her mother's mind--"Poor Gwen too is sad and faded now"--and then,
for the first time, she sobbed, not in anger, but with a sort of tender
misery.

Her face was toward the door, and she saw her mother enter. She barely
saw that; for her eyes were large with tears, and she pressed her
handkerchief against them hurriedly. Before she took it away she felt
her mother's arms round her, and this sensation, which seemed a
prolongation of her inward vision, overcame her will to be reticent;
she sobbed anew in spite of herself, as they pressed their cheeks
together.

Mrs. Davilow had brought something in her hand which had already caused
her an agitating anxiety, and she dared not speak until her darling had
become calmer. But Gwendolen, with whom weeping had always been a
painful manifestation to be resisted, if possible, again pressed her
handkerchief against her eyes, and, with a deep breath, drew her head
backward and looked at her mother, who was pale and