brocade of the very same
pattern as that which the fellow was carrying, and presented it to my wife
for a morning wrapper, to receive company after she lay-in of our little
boy.'

"Your little pension was paid regularly enough; and when your father
became Viscount Castlewood on his uncle's demise, I was employed to keep a
watch over you, and 'twas at my instance that you were brought home. Your
foster-mother was dead; her father made acquaintance with a woman whom he
married, who quarrelled with his son. The faithful creature came back to
Brussels to be near the woman he loved, and died, too, a few months before
her. Will you see her cross in the convent cemetery? The superior is an
old penitent of mine, and remembers Soeur Marie Madeleine fondly still."

-------------------------------------

Esmond came to this spot in one sunny evening of spring, and saw, amidst a
thousand black crosses, casting their shadows across the grassy mounds,
that particular one which marked his mother's resting-place. Many more of
those poor creatures that lay there had adopted that same name, with which
sorrow had rebaptized her, and which fondly seemed to hint their
individual story of love and grief. He fancied her in tears and darkness,
kneeling at the foot of her cross, under which her cares were buried.

Surely he knelt down, and said his own prayer there, not in sorrow so much
as in awe (for even his memory had no recollection of her), and in pity
for the pangs which the gentle soul in life had been made to suffer. To
this cross she brought them; for this heavenly bridegroom she exchanged
the husband who had wooed her, the traitor who had left her. A thousand
such hillocks lay round about, the gentle daisies springing out of the
grass over them, and each bearing its cross and requiescat. A nun, veiled
in black, was kneeling hard by, at a sleeping sister's bedside (so fresh
made, that the spring had scarce had time to spin a coverlid for it);
beyond the cemetery walls you had glimpses of life and the world, and the
spires and gables of the city. A bird came down from a roof opposite, and
lit first on a cross, and then on the grass below it, whence it flew away
presently with a leaf in its mouth: then came a sound as of chanting, from
the chapel of the sisters hard by; others had long since filled the place,
which poor Mary Magdalene once had there, were kneeling at the same stall,
and hearing the same hymns and pra