d it made them all smile a
little--all, that is to say, except Jacinth. She had not altogether
relished her mother's remark.

But that evening was a most happy one--perhaps the very happiest the two
younger children had ever known--and one certainly to be marked with a
white stone in the memory of all the five who spent it together. By a
tacit agreement no uncertain or anxious questions were touched upon. Mrs
Mildmay was able to give a good account of their father's health at the
time of her leaving him, to the children, and made them all laugh by her
account of her brother Marmaduke's description of the terrible formality
of that first evening at Market Square Place. She seemed gifted with a
wonderful amount of fun and merriment: Jacinth caught herself laughing
after a fashion which was very rare with her.

'Mamma is ever so much _younger_ than I,' she said to herself when she
found herself alone for the night. 'She is as charming and sweet as she
can be. But I can foresee some things pretty clearly. It is a good thing
I am of a different character. What would happen if we were all as
impulsive and'--'childish' was the word in her thoughts, but again she
felt a little startled at the length to which her criticism of her
mother was going, and pulled herself up--'as impulsive as Francie, and
as mamma must be by nature?'

And she fell asleep in the midst of a not unpleasing picture of herself
as the wise, considerate prop of the whole family, looked up to by her
parents, leant upon by Lady Myrtle, a Lady Bountiful to all within her
reach, a----But here I think her imaginings probably faded into the
phantasmagoria of dreams.

Mrs Mildmay had bidden her elder girl a fond good-night; then she
hastened along the passage for a moment's peep into Frances's little
room.

'The child will be asleep, I daresay,' she thought to herself. 'It is
almost selfish of me to risk waking her. But I will be very careful, and
I really cannot resist the delight of seeing them in bed, of knowing
they are under the same roof again at last.'

And she stole in. It was a moonlight night. Francie had been in bed some
little time, but she was not asleep. She was lying with her eyes wide
open gazing out through the unshaded window, which was within her view,
at the tree tops, illumined by the silvery radiance, and swaying gently
in the soft night breeze; her shaggy hair making a background on the
pillow for her sweet, childish face. And at the f