with that soft
light of motherhood and happy wifehood which we look for in vain on many
faces which are beautiful, but _lack_ something. Her own mother
acknowledged the charm, and often thought how much dearer and more
beautiful Joyce had become in her eyes since her marriage, and how the
father who had loved her so dearly would have rejoiced to see her now.

This thought was in her mind when Joyce said:

"Is not Lota too heavy for you, mother? Shall we change? Let me give you
baby."

"No, dear, no; it would be a pity to wake the baby; how sweet she looks.
There will never be any children in the old home now, I am afraid." And
Mrs. Falconer sighed.

"I don't think they are wanted," Joyce said; "but perhaps till people
have babies they don't know how delightful they are. Piers is laughing
at me."

"Not at you. I was only thinking how Gratian and Melville would hate the
bother of children about the house."

"They were very kind to us," Joyce said. "It seems to me that we may be
very thankful Melville married Gratian."

"Yes, she keeps him in good order."

Mrs. Falconer had still a weak, very weak, place in her heart for
Melville, and she said, sharply:

"That's not a becoming way to speak of your eldest brother."

Piers shrugged his shoulders. He took in, more fully than his mother
could, the trouble that Melville's conduct had brought upon them all,
especially on Ralph--Ralph, who might have done so well in scholarship,
now acting as steward to his brother, with less thanks and less pay than
he deserved. It irritated Piers to see Melville's self-satisfaction, and
to know that from sheer indolence, if Ralph had not come to the rescue,
he would have brought the inheritance of his fathers to hopeless ruin.

Melville had his wish now. Gratian took care that their position should
be recognised, and they visited at the houses of the neighbouring
gentry, where Gratian's ready tact, and powers of fascination, were
acknowledged. It became the fashion to enliven a dull, heavy dinner by
inviting Mrs. Melville Falconer, who could tell amusing stories,
seasoned with French phrases, and listen with apparently deep interest
to the stories other people told, whether they related to the weather,
the crops, or the fashions.

Joyce saw the cloud on Piers' face, and hastened to say that Ralph had
written a very clever treatise on draining land, and that Gilbert
thought it would draw people's attention to the subject, from the