to society
called at the park, and among them Mrs. Crawford. But Mrs. Tracy had
then reached a point from which she looked down upon one who had been
housekeeper where she was now mistress, and whose daughter's good name
was under a cloud, as there were some who did not believe that Harold
Hastings had ever made her his wife. When told that Mrs. Crawford had
asked for her Mrs. Tracy sent word that she was engaged, and that if
Mrs. Crawford pleased she would give her errand to the girl.

'I have no errand. I came to call,' was Mrs. Crawford's reply, and she
never crossed the threshold of her old home again until the March winds
were blowing and there was a little boy in the nursery at the park.

At the last moment the expected nurse had fallen sick, and in his
perplexity Mr. Tracy went to the cottage in the lane and begged of Mrs.
Crawford to come and care for his wife. Mrs. Crawford was very proud,
but she was poor, too, and as the price per week which Frank offered her
was four times as much as she could earn by sewing, she consented at
last and went as nurse to the sick-room, and the baby, Tom, on whose
little red face she imprinted many a kiss for the sake of her daughter
who was coming home in June, and over whom the shadow of hope and fear
was hanging.

Dolly Tracy's growth after it fairly commenced, was very rapid, and when
Mrs. Crawford went to her as nurse she had three servants in her employ,
besides the coachman, and was imitating Mrs. Atherton to the best of her
ability; and when, early in the summer, she received the wedding cards
of Edith Hastings, the young lady from Collingwood, who had married a
Mr. St. Claire instead of her guardian, she felt that her position was
assured, and from that time her progress was onward and upward until the
October morning, ten years later, when our story proper opens, and we
see her standing upon the piazza of her handsome house, with every sign
of wealth and luxury about her person, from the silken robe to the
jewels upon her soft, white hands, which once had washed her own dishes,
and canned berries in her own kitchen, where she had received Grace
Atherton, with her sleeves above her elbows.

There were five servants in the house now, and they ran over and against
each other, and quarrelled, and gossipped, and worried her life nearly
out of her, until she was sometimes tempted to send them away and do the
work herself. But she was far too great a lady for that. She dr