in aside, and goes
through his pretty routine of baby tricks for her amusement,--laughing,
crowing, imitating the sound of the bellows, and even saying "Bravo!"
Then comes his bath, which she herself gives him, and then his walk and
mid-day sleep.

"I feel so refreshed by his young life, and Ossoli diffuses such a power
and sweetness over every day, that I cannot endure to think yet of our
future. We have resolved to enjoy being together as much as we can in
this brief interval, perhaps all we shall ever know of peace. I rejoice
in all that Ossoli did (in the interest of the liberal party); but the
results are disastrous, especially as my strength is now so impaired.
This much I hope, in life or death, to be no more separated from
Angelo."

Margaret's future did indeed look to her full of difficult duties. At
forty years of age, having labored all her life for her father's family,
she was to begin a new struggle for her own. She had looked this
necessity bravely in the face, and with resolute hand had worked at a
history of recent events in Italy, hoping thus to make a start in the
second act of her life-work. The two volumes which she had completed by
this time seemed to her impaired in value by the intense, personal
suffering which had lain like a weight upon her. Such leisure as the
care of Angelo left her, while in Florence, was employed in the
continuation of this work, whose loss we deplore the more for the
intense personal feeling which must have throbbed through its pages.
Margaret had hoped to pass this winter without any enforced literary
labor, learning of her child, as she wisely says, and as no doubt she
did, whatever else she may have found it necessary to do. In the
chronicle of her days he plays an important part, his baby laugh "all
dimples and glitter," his contentment in the fair scene about him when,
carried to the _Cascine_, he lies back in her arms, smiling, singing to
himself, and moving his tiny feet. The Christmas holidays are dearer to
her than ever before, for his sake. In the evening, before the bright
little fire, he sits on his stool between father and mother, reminding
Margaret of the days in which she had been so seated between her own
parents. He is to her "a source of ineffable joys, far purer, deeper,
than anything I ever felt before."

As Margaret's husband was destined to remain a tradition only to the
greater number of her friends, the hints and outlines of him given here
and th