y gal--only my gal--that's
to change so!'

'We shall all change, mother, in our turn,' said Alice.

'Turn!' cried the old woman, 'but why not hers as soon as my gal's! The
mother must have changed--she looked as old as me, and full as wrinkled
through her paint--but she was handsome. What have I done, I, what have
I done worse than her, that only my gal is to lie there fading!' With
another of those wild cries, she went running out into the room from
which she had come; but immediately, in her uncertain mood, returned,
and creeping up to Harriet, said:

'That's what Alice bade me tell you, deary. That's all. I found it out
when I began to ask who she was, and all about her, away in Warwickshire
there, one summer-time. Such relations was no good to me, then. They
wouldn't have owned me, and had nothing to give me. I should have asked
'em, maybe, for a little money, afterwards, if it hadn't been for my
Alice; she'd a'most have killed me, if I had, I think She was as proud
as t'other in her way,' said the old woman, touching the face of her
daughter fearfully, and withdrawing her hand, 'for all she's so quiet
now; but she'll shame 'em with her good looks yet. Ha, ha! She'll shame
'em, will my handsome daughter!'

Her laugh, as she retreated, was worse than her cry; worse than the
burst of imbecile lamentation in which it ended; worse than the doting
air with which she sat down in her old seat, and stared out at the
darkness.

The eyes of Alice had all this time been fixed on Harriet, whose hand
she had never released. She said now:

'I have felt, lying here, that I should like you to know this. It might
explain, I have thought, something that used to help to harden me. I had
heard so much, in my wrongdoing, of my neglected duty, that I took up
with the belief that duty had not been done to me, and that as the seed
was sown, the harvest grew. I somehow made it out that when ladies had
bad homes and mothers, they went wrong in their way, too; but that their
way was not so foul a one as mine, and they had need to bless God for
it.' That is all past. It is like a dream, now, which I cannot quite
remember or understand. It has been more and more like a dream, every
day, since you began to sit here, and to read to me. I only tell it you,
as I can recollect it. Will you read to me a little more?'

Harriet was withdrawing her hand to open the book, when Alice detained
it for a moment.

'You will not forget my mother? I f