ter said wrathfully, 'to let her go, Mary, and cheat me by
not telling me the truth. You want the child to go to ruin as you did
yourself, I suppose.'

Mary Gifford's face flushed crimson, as she said,--

'It ill becomes my father's wife to taunt his daughter, when he is not here
to defend her. Come with me, Ambrose, nor stay to listen to more hard
words.'

But the child doubled his small fists, and said, approaching his
grandmother,--

'I'll beat you. I'll kill you if you make mother cry! I will, you--'

'Hush, my little son,' Mary said, drawing the boy away. 'It is near thy
bedtime. Come with me; nor forget thy manners if other folk are not mindful
of theirs.'

The tears of mingled sorrow and anger were coursing each other down Mary
Gifford's face, but she wiped them hastily away, and, putting her arm round
the child, she led him up the narrow stairs leading from the large kitchen
to the room above, where she sat down, with Ambrose clasped close to her
heart, by the square bay window, which was flung open on this lovely April
evening.

Ford Manor stood on the slope of the hill, commanding a view of the meadows
stretching down to the valley, where the home of the Sidneys and the tower
of the old church could be seen amongst the trees, now golden in the
brilliant western sunshine of the spring evening. Perhaps there can
scarcely be found a more enchanting prospect than that on which Mary
Gifford looked, as she sat with her boy clasped in her arms, her heart,
which had been pierced with many sorrows, still smarting with the sharp
thrust her stepmother had given her.

[Illustration: PENSHURST CHURCH AND CASTLE.]

That young sister whom she loved so passionately, about whom, in her gay
thoughtless youth, she was so anxious, whom she was ever longing to see
safe under the shelter of a good man's love--it was hard that her boy
should hear such words from those pitiless lips--'lead her to
ruin!'--when her one desire was to shield her from all contamination of the
evil world, of which she had herself had such bitter experience.

Little Ambrose was tired, after a day of incessant running hither and
thither, and lay quiet with his head on his mother's breast, in that
blissful state of contentment to find himself there, which gives the thrill
of deepest joy to a mother's heart.

Ambrose was six years old, and a fair and even beautiful child. The stiff,
ugly dress of the time, could not quite hide the symmetry of his