uniform kindness and consideration than ever I have observed her to
do before. I date the time of this improvement from the period when she
ceased to hope and strive for Arthur's admiration.

CHAPTER XXXII

October 5th.--Esther Hargrave is getting a fine girl. She is not out of
the school-room yet, but her mother frequently brings her over to call in
the mornings when the gentlemen are out, and sometimes she spends an hour
or two in company with her sister and me, and the children; and when we
go to the Grove, I always contrive to see her, and talk more to her than
to any one else, for I am very much attached to my little friend, and so
is she to me. I wonder what she can see to like in me though, for I am
no longer the happy, lively girl I used to be; but she has no other
society, save that of her uncongenial mother, and her governess (as
artificial and conventional a person as that prudent mother could procure
to rectify the pupil's natural qualities), and, now and then, her
subdued, quiet sister. I often wonder what will be her lot in life, and
so does she; but her speculations on the future are full of buoyant hope;
so were mine once. I shudder to think of her being awakened, like me, to
a sense of their delusive vanity. It seems as if I should feel her
disappointment, even more deeply than my own. I feel almost as if I were
born for such a fate, but she is so joyous and fresh, so light of heart
and free of spirit, and so guileless and unsuspecting too. Oh, it would
be cruel to make her feel as I feel now, and know what I have known!

Her sister trembles for her too. Yesterday morning, one of October's
brightest, loveliest days, Milicent and I were in the garden enjoying a
brief half-hour together with our children, while Annabella was lying on
the drawing-room sofa, deep in the last new novel. We had been romping
with the little creatures, almost as merry and wild as themselves, and
now paused in the shade of the tall copper beech, to recover breath and
rectify our hair, disordered by the rough play and the frolicsome breeze,
while they toddled together along the broad, sunny walk; my Arthur
supporting the feebler steps of her little Helen, and sagaciously
pointing out to her the brightest beauties of the border as they passed,
with semi-articulate prattle, that did as well for her as any other mode
of discourse. From laughing at the pretty sight, we began to talk of the
children's future life;