esmaid at weddings where the charming brides,
notwithstanding their superficial loveliness, possessed few of the
qualifications for wifehood with which she was so richly endowed.

She was godmother to her friends' babies, she, whose motherhood would
have been a thing for wonder and worship.

She had a glorious voice, but her face not matching it, its existence
was rarely suspected; and as she accompanied to perfection, she was
usually in requisition to play for the singing of others.

In short, all her life long Jane had filled second places, and filled
them very contentedly. She had never known what it was to be absolutely
first with any one. Her mother's death had occurred during her infancy,
so that she had not even the most shadowy remembrance of that maternal
love and tenderness which she used sometimes to try to imagine,
although she had never experienced it.

Her mother's maid, a faithful and devoted woman, dismissed soon after
the death of her mistress, chancing to be in the neighbourhood some
twelve years later, called at the manor, in the hope of finding some in
the household who remembered her.

After tea, Fraulein and Miss Jebb being out of the way, she was
spirited up into the schoolroom to see Miss Jane, her heart full of
memories of the "sweet babe" upon whom she and her dear lady had
lavished so much love and care.

She found awaiting her a tall, plain girl with a frank, boyish manner
and a rather disconcerting way as she afterwards remarked, of "taking
stock of a body the while one was a-talking," which at first checked
the flow of good Sarah's reminiscences, poured forth so freely in the
housekeeper's room below, and reduced her to looking tearfully around
the room, remarking that she remembered choosing the blessed wall-paper
with her dear lady now gone, whose joy had been so great when the dear
babe first took notice and reached up for the roses. "And I can show
you, miss, if you care to know it just which bunch of roses it were."

But before Sarah's visit was over, Jane had heard many
undreamed-of-things; amongst others, that her mother used to kiss her
little hands, "ah, many a time she, did, miss; called them little
rose-petals, and covered them with kisses."

The child, utterly unused to any demonstrations of affection, looked at
her rather ungainly brown hands and laughed, simply because she was
ashamed of the unwonted tightening at her throat and the queer stinging
of tears beneath her