ection of some invisible influence.

And so, while the babe smiled, there came to its face such an
angel-brightness, that it shone into the mother's careless heart. For
the first time since that mournful day which had so changed her nature,
Sybilla Rothesay sat down and kissed the child of her own accord. Elspie
heard no maternal blessing--the name of "Olive" was never breathed; but
the nurse was satisfied when she saw that the babe's second baptism was
its mother's repentant tears.

There was in Sybilla no hardness nor cruelty, only the disappointment
and vexation of a child deprived of an expected toy. She might have
grown weary of her little daughter almost as soon, even if her pride and
hope had not been crushed by the knowledge of Olive's deformity. Love to
her seemed a treasure to be paid in requital, not a free gift bestowed
without thought of return. That self-forgetting maternal devotion,
lavished first on unconscious infancy, and then on unregarding youth,
was a mystery to her utterly incomprehensible. At least it seemed so
now, when, with the years and the character of a child, she was called
to the highest duty of woman's life. This duty comes to some girlish
mothers as an instinct, but it was not so with Mrs. Rothesay. An orphan,
and heiress to a competence, if not to wealth, she had been brought up
like a plant in a hot-bed, with all natural impulses either warped and
suppressed, or forced into undue luxuriance. And yet it was a sweet
plant withal; one that might have grown, ay, and might yet grow, into
perfect strength and beauty.

Mrs. Rothesay's education--that education of heart, and mind, and
temper, which is essential to a woman's happiness, had to begin when it
ought to have been completed--at her marriage. Most unfortunate it was
for her, that ere the first twelvemonth of their wedded life had passed,
Captain Rothesay was forced to depart for Jamaica, whence was derived
his wife's little fortune; their whole fortune now, for he had quitted
the army on his marriage. Thus Sybilla was deprived of that wholesome
influence which man has ever over a woman who loves him, and by which
he may, if he so will, counteract many a fault and weakness in her
disposition.

Time passed on, and Mrs. Rothesay, a wife and mother, was at twenty-one
years old just the same as she had been at seventeen--as girlish, as
thoughtless, eager for any amusement, and often treading on the very
verge of folly. She still lived