let's _trousseau_. It is dreadful to think that it may have to be
made by a provincial dressmaker, and with no one to supervise and
direct."

"Dearest mother, you are going to supervise everything," exclaimed
Vixen. "I shall not think of being married till you are well and strong
again."

"That will be never," sighed the invalid.

Upon this point she was very firm. They all tried--husband, daughter,
and friends--to delude her with false hopes, thinking thus to fan the
flame of life and keep the brief candle burning a little longer. She
was not deceived. She felt herself gradually, painlessly sinking. She
complained but little; much less than in the days when her ailments had
been in some part fanciful; but she knew very surely that her day was
done.

"It is very sweet to have you with me, Violet," she said. "Your
goodness, and Conrad's loving attentions, make me very happy. I feel
almost as if I should like to live a few years longer."

"Only almost, mother darling?" exclaimed Violet reproachfully.

"I don't know, dear. I have such a weary feeling; as if life at the
very best were not worth the trouble it cost us. I shouldn't mind going
on living if I could always lie here, and take no trouble about
anything, and be nursed and waited upon, and have you or Conrad always
by my side--but to get well again, and to have to get up, and go about
among other people, and take up all the cares of life--no dear, I am
much too weary for that. And then if I could get well to-morrow, old
age and death would still be staring me in the face. I could not escape
them. No, love, it is much better to die now, before I am very old, or
quite hideous; even before my hair is gray."

She took up one of the soft auburn tresses from her pillow, and looked
at it, half sadly.

"Your dear papa used to admire my hair, Violet," she said. "There are a
few gray hairs, but you would hardly notice them; but my hair is much
thinner than it used to be, and I don't think I could ever have made up
my mind to wear false hair. It never quite matches one's own. I have
seen Lady Ellangowan wearing three distinct heads of hair; and yet
gentlemen admire her."

Mrs. Winstanley was always at her best during those afternoon
tea-drinkings. The strong tea revived her; Roderick's friendly face and
voice cheered her. They took her back to the remote past, to the kind
Squire's day of glory, which she remembered as the happiest time of her
life; even now, when h