o far disgraced herself.

But she did believe it. Her heart had in truth told her that it was
true at the first word the lawyer had spoken to her. How blind she
must have been not to have known it! How grossly stupid not to have
understood those asseverations from the girl, that the marriage with
her cousin was impossible! Her child had not only deceived her, but
had possessed cunning enough to maintain her deception. It must have
been going on for at least the last twelvemonth, and she, the while,
had been kept in the dark by the manoeuvres of a simple girl! And
then she thought of the depth of the degradation which was prepared
for her. Had she passed twenty years of unintermittent combat for
this,--that when all had been done, when at last success was won,
when the rank and wealth of her child had been made positively
secure before the world, when she was about to see the unquestioned
coronet of a Countess placed upon her child's brow,--all should be
destroyed through a passion so mean as this! Would it not have been
better to have died in poverty and obscurity,--while there were yet
doubts,--before any assured disgrace had rested on her? But, oh! to
have proved that she was a Countess, and her child the heiress of
an Earl, in order that the Lady Anna Lovel might become the wife of
Daniel Thwaite, the tailor!

She made many resolutions; but the first was this, that she would
never smile upon the girl again till this baseness should have been
abandoned. She loved her girl as only mothers do love. More devoted
than the pelican, she would have given her heart's blood,--had given
all her life,--not only to nurture, but to aggrandize her child. The
establishment of her own position, her own honour, her own name, was
to her but the incidental result of her daughter's emblazonment in
the world. The child which she had borne to Earl Lovel, and which the
father had stigmatised as a bastard, should by her means be known as
the Lady Anna, the heiress of that father's wealth,--the wealthiest,
the fairest, the most noble of England's daughters. Then there had
come the sweet idea that this high-born heiress of the Lovels, should
herself become Countess Lovel, and the mother had risen higher in her
delighted pride. It had all been for her child! Had she not loved as
a mother, and with all a mother's tenderness? And for what?

She would love still, but she would never again be tender till her
daughter should have repudiated her b