the stranger lady leaning upon her arm, and the lovely
child leaping like a young lamb before them. Days and weeks passed away,
and the good people of Thorndean, notwithstanding all their surmises and
inquiries, were no wiser regarding their new visitor; all they could
learn was, that she was the widow of a young officer, who was one of the
first that fell when Britain interfered with the French Revolution; and
the mother and her child became known in the village by the designation
of "Mrs. Douglas's twa pictures!"--an appellation bestowed on them in
reference to their beauty.

The beautiful destroyer, however, lay in the mother's heart, now paling
her cheeks like the early lily, and again scattering over them the rose
and the rainbow. Still dreaming of recovery, about eight months after
her arrival in Thorndean, death stole over her like a sweet sleep. It
was only a few moments before the angel hurled the fatal shaft, that the
truth fell upon her soul. She was stretching forth her hand to her
work-basket, her lovely child was prattling by her knee, and Mrs.
Douglas smiling like a parent upon both, striving to conceal a tear
while she smiled, when the breathing of her fair guest became difficult,
and the rose, which a moment before bloomed upon her countenance,
vanished in a fitful streak. She flung her feeble arms around the neck
of her child, who now wept upon her bosom, and exclaimed, "Oh! my
Elizabeth, who will protect you now, my poor, poor orphan?" Mrs. Douglas
sprang to her assistance. She said she had much to tell, and endeavoured
to speak; but a gurgling sound only was heard in her throat; she panted
for breath; the rosy streaks, deepening into blue, came and went upon
her cheeks like the midnight dances of the northern lights; her eyes
flashed with a momentary brightness more than mortal, and the spirit
fled. The fair orphan still clung to the neck, and kissed the yet warm
lips of her dead mother.

As yet she was too young to see all the dreariness of the desolation
around her; but she was indeed an orphan in the most cruel meaning of
the word. Her mother had preserved a mystery over her sorrows and the
circumstances of her life, which Mrs. Douglas had never endeavoured to
penetrate. And now she was left to be as a mother to the helpless child,
for she knew not if she had another friend; and all that she had heard
of the mother's history was recorded on the humble stone which she
placed over her grave: "_Here