ence!' and then her bosom heaved, and she was weeping
passionately.

'Mama!' said Florence. 'Oh Mama, what can I do, what should I do, to
make us happier? Is there anything?'

'Nothing,' she replied.

'Are you sure of that? Can it never be? If I speak now of what is in my
thoughts, in spite of what we have agreed,' said Florence, 'you will not
blame me, will you?'

'It is useless,' she replied, 'useless. I have told you, dear, that I
have had bad dreams. Nothing can change them, or prevent them coming
back.'

'I do not understand,' said Florence, gazing on her agitated face which
seemed to darken as she looked.

'I have dreamed,' said Edith in a low voice, 'of a pride that is all
powerless for good, all powerful for evil; of a pride that has been
galled and goaded, through many shameful years, and has never recoiled
except upon itself; a pride that has debased its owner with the
consciousness of deep humiliation, and never helped its owner boldly
to resent it or avoid it, or to say, "This shall not be!" a pride that,
rightly guided, might have led perhaps to better things, but which,
misdirected and perverted, like all else belonging to the same
possessor, has been self-contempt, mere hardihood and ruin.'

She neither looked nor spoke to Florence now, but went on as if she were
alone.

'I have dreamed,' she said, 'of such indifference and callousness,
arising from this self-contempt; this wretched, inefficient, miserable
pride; that it has gone on with listless steps even to the altar,
yielding to the old, familiar, beckoning finger,--oh mother, oh
mother!--while it spurned it; and willing to be hateful to itself for
once and for all, rather than to be stung daily in some new form. Mean,
poor thing!'

And now with gathering and darkening emotion, she looked as she had
looked when Florence entered.

'And I have dreamed,' she said, 'that in a first late effort to achieve
a purpose, it has been trodden on, and trodden down by a base foot, but
turns and looks upon him. I have dreamed that it is wounded, hunted, set
upon by dogs, but that it stands at hay, and will not yield; no, that it
cannot if it would; but that it is urged on to hate.'

Her clenched hand tightened on the trembling arm she had in hers, and as
she looked down on the alarmed and wondering face, frown subsided. 'Oh
Florence!' she said, 'I think I have been nearly mad to-night!' and
humbled her proud head upon her neck and wept again.

'Don'