mother--that sweet young mother--never walked steadily when she was out
with me. It was as though she could not help dancing like a child.

"Come along, baby darling," she would say to me, "let us get away from
them all, and have a race."

She called me "baby" until I was nearly six--for no other came to take
my place. I heard the servants speak of me, and say what a great heiress
I would be in the years to come, if my father had no sons; but I hardly
understood, and cared still less.

As I grew older I worshipped my beautiful mother, she was so very kind
to me. I always felt that she was so pleased to see me. She never gave
me the impression that I was tiresome, or intruded on her. Sometimes her
toilet would be finished before the dinner-bell rang, then she would
come to the nursery and ask for me. We walked up and down the long
picture gallery, where the dead, and gone Ladies Tayne looked at us from
the walls. No face there was so fair as my mother's. She was more
beautiful than a picture, with her golden hair and fair face, her
sweeping dresses and trailing laces.

The tears rise even now, hot and bitter, to my eyes when I think of
those happy hours--my intense pride in and devoted love for my mother.
How lightly I held her hand, how I kissed her lovely trailing laces.

"Mamma," I said to her, one day, "it is just like coming to heaven when
you call me to walk with you."

"You will know a better heaven some day," she said, laughingly; "but I
have not known it yet."

What was there she did not do? She sang until the music seemed to float
round the room; she drew and painted, and she danced. I have seen no one
like her. They said she was like an angel in the house; so young, so
fair, so sweet--so young, yet, in her wise, sweet way, a mother and
friend to the whole household. Even the maids, when they had done
anything wrong and feared the housekeeper, would ask my mother to
intercede for them.

If she saw a servant who had been crying, she did not rest until she
knew the cause of the tears. If it were a sick mother, then money and
wine would be dispatched. I have heard since that even if their love
affairs went wrong, it was always "my lady" who set them right, and many
a happy marriage took place from Tayne Abbey.

It was just the same with the poor on the estate; she was a friend to
each one, man, woman or child. Her face was like a sunbeam in the
cottages, yet she was by no means unwise or indiscriminate i