cture. His little hand was fast in her hair. She
always walked as if she'd wheels on her feet, that gliding and graceful.
She had on a sort of sheeny yellow silk, and her cheeks were like them
damask roses at home, and her eyes fair shone like stars. 'Isn't he a
beauty, Nana?' she asked me. 'If only he had blue eyes, and that hair
of gold like my husband's, and not these ugly eyes of mine!' And as she
spoke she sighed as I dreaded to hear. Then she told me to help her to
unpack her new dress from Paris, which she was to wear at the Rochester
races the next day. Master Horace always chose her dresses, and he was
right proud of her in them. And next morning he came into the nursery
with her, and she was all in pale red, and that beautiful! 'Isn't she
scrumptious, Nana?' he said, in his boyish way. 'Don't spoil her dress,
children. How like her Marie grows!' Those two little ones they had got
her on her knees on the ground, and were hugging her as if they couldn't
let her go. But when he said that, she got up very still and white.

"'I am sorry,' she said; 'they must never be like me.'

"'They can't be any one better, can they, baby?' he answered her, and he
tossed the child nearly up to the ceiling. But he looked worried as he
went out. I saw them drive away, and they looked happy enough. And oh,
miss, I saw them come back. We were in the porch, me and the children.
Master Horace lifted her down, and I heard him say, 'Never mind, Marie.'
But she never looked his way nor ours; she walked straight in and
upstairs to her room, past my bonny darling with his arm stretched out
to her, and past Miss Marie, who was jumping up and down, and shouting
'Muvver'; and I heard her door shut. Then Master Horace took baby from
me.

"'Go up to her,' he said, and I could scarce hear him. His face was all
drawn like, but I felt that silly and stupid that I could say nothing,
and just went upstairs." Mrs. Bentley put her knitting down, and
throwing her apron over her head sobbed aloud.

"O nurse, what was it?" cried Alice, and the colour left her cheeks. "Do
tell me. I am so sorry for them. What was it?" It was several minutes
before the good woman could recover herself; then she began:

"She told me, and Dick Burdas he told me, and it was like this. When
they got to the race-course,--it was the first races they'd had in
Rochester,--all the gentry was there, and those that knew her always
made a deal of her, she had such half-shy, winnin