English fairy
story, out of a book which my father had given to her--and her kind
voice grew fainter and fainter, while I grew more and more sleepy--and
it ended softly, just as it used to end in the happy old days. And I
woke, crying. Do you ever dream of your mother now?"

"I? God forbid!"

"Oh, Frances, what a dreadful thing to say!"

"Is it? It was the thought in me, when you spoke. And with good reason,
too. I was the last of a large family--the ugly one; the ill-tempered
one; the encumbrance that made it harder than ever to find money enough
to pay the household expenses. My father swore at my mother for being my
mother. She reviled him just as bitterly in return; and vented the rest
of her ill-temper on my wretched little body, with no sparing hand.
Bedtime was her time for beating me. Talk of your mother--not of mine!
You were very young, were you not, when she died?"

"Too young to feel my misfortune--but old enough to remember the
sweetest woman that ever lived. Let me show you my father's portrait of
her again. Doesn't that face tell you what an angel she was? There was
some charm in her that all children felt. I can just remember some of my
playfellows who used to come to our garden. Other good mothers were with
us--but the children all crowded round _my_ mother. They would have her
in all their games; they fought for places on her lap when she told them
stories; some of them cried, and some of them screamed, when it was time
to take them away from her. Oh, why do we live! why do we die! I have
bitter thoughts sometimes, Frances, like you. I have read in poetry that
death is a fearful thing. To me, death is a cruel thing,--and it has
never seemed so cruel as in these later days, since I have known Ovid.
If my mother had but lived till now, what happiness would have been
added to my life and to hers! How Ovid would have loved her--how she
would have loved Ovid!"

Miss Minerva listened in silence. It was the silence of true interest
and sympathy, while Carmina was speaking of her mother. When her lover's
name became mingled with the remembrances of her childhood--the change
came. Once more, the tell-tale lines began to harden in the governess's
face. She lay back again in her chair. Her fingers irritably platted and
unplatted the edge of her black apron.

Carmina was too deeply absorbed in her thoughts, too eagerly bent on
giving them expression, to notice these warning signs.

"I have all my mother's