or herself it sufficed. For herself she was able to
acknowledge that the rest which she had at least obtained was infinitely
preferable to the unrest of her past life. But she soon learned,--as she
had not expected to learn before she made the experiment,--that that
which was to her peace, was to her daughter life within a tomb. "Mother,
is it always to be like this?"

Had her child not carried the weight of good blood, had some small
grocer or country farmer been her father, she might have come down to
the neighbouring town of Ennistimon, and found a fitting mate there.
Would it not have been better so? From that weight of good blood,--or
gift, if it please us to call it,--what advantage would ever come to her
girl? It can not really be that all those who swarm in the world below
the bar of gentlehood are less blessed, or intended to be less blessed,
than the few who float in the higher air. As to real blessedness, does
it not come from fitness to the outer life and a sense of duty that
shall produce such fitness? Does any one believe that the Countess has a
greater share of happiness than the grocer's wife, or is less subject to
the miseries which flesh inherits? But such matters cannot be changed
by the will. This woman could not bid her daughter go and meet the
butcher's son on equal terms, or seek her friends among the milliners of
the neighbouring town. The burden had been imposed and must be borne,
even though it isolated them from all the world.

"Mother, is it always to be like this?" Of course the mother knew what
was needed. It was needed that the girl should go out into the world and
pair, that she should find some shoulder on which she might lean, some
arm that would be strong to surround her, the heart of some man and the
work of some man to which she might devote herself. The girl, when she
asked her question, did not know this,--but the mother knew it. The
mother looked at her child and said that of all living creatures her
child was surely the loveliest. Was it not fit that she should go forth
and be loved;--that she should at any rate go forth and take her chance
with others? But how should such going forth be managed? And then,--were
there not dangers, terrible dangers,--dangers specially terrible to one
so friendless as her child? Had not she herself been wrecked among the
rocks, trusting herself to one who had been utterly unworthy,--loving
one who had been utterly unlovely? Men so often are as rave