seded by new ties, and he
could forgive the having been supplanted in his affection, may have
occasioned them. The mere association of her as an ornament, with all
the ornament and pomp about him, may have been sufficient. But as he
looked, he softened to her, more and more. As he looked, she became
blended with the child he had loved, and he could hardly separate the
two. As he looked, he saw her for an instant by a clearer and a brighter
light, not bending over that child's pillow as his rival--monstrous
thought--but as the spirit of his home, and in the action tending
himself no less, as he sat once more with his bowed-down head upon his
hand at the foot of the little bed. He felt inclined to speak to her,
and call her to him. The words 'Florence, come here!' were rising to his
lips--but slowly and with difficulty, they were so very strange--when
they were checked and stifled by a footstep on the stair.

It was his wife's. She had exchanged her dinner dress for a loose robe,
and unbound her hair, which fell freely about her neck. But this was not
the change in her that startled him.

'Florence, dear,' she said, 'I have been looking for you everywhere.'

As she sat down by the side of Florence, she stooped and kissed her
hand. He hardly knew his wife. She was so changed. It was not merely
that her smile was new to him--though that he had never seen; but her
manner, the tone of her voice, the light of her eyes, the interest, and
confidence, and winning wish to please, expressed in all-this was not
Edith.

'Softly, dear Mama. Papa is asleep.'

It was Edith now. She looked towards the corner where he was, and he
knew that face and manner very well.

'I scarcely thought you could be here, Florence.'

Again, how altered and how softened, in an instant!

'I left here early,' pursued Edith, 'purposely to sit upstairs and talk
with you. But, going to your room, I found my bird was flown, and I have
been waiting there ever since, expecting its return.

If it had been a bird, indeed, she could not have taken it more tenderly
and gently to her breast, than she did Florence.

'Come, dear!'

'Papa will not expect to find me, I suppose, when he wakes,' hesitated
Florence.

'Do you think he will, Florence?' said Edith, looking full upon her.

Florence drooped her head, and rose, and put up her work-basket Edith
drew her hand through her arm, and they went out of the room like
sisters. Her very step was different and