How far she herself appreciated her new and important position; whether her duties were done from duty, or pity, or that determined self-devotedness which some women are always ready to carry out toward any helpless thing that needs them, I can not say, for she never told.  Not even to Miss Hilary, who at last was permitted to come and pay a formal visit; nor to Tom Cliffe, whom she now saw very rarely, for her mistress, with characteristic selfishness, would hardly let her out of her sight for half an hour.

Tom at first was exceedingly savage at this:  by degrees he got more reconciled, and met his sweet-heart now and then for a few minutes at the area gate or wrote her long poetical letters, which he confided to some of her fellow-servants, who thereby got acquainted with their secret.  But it mattered little, as Elizabeth had faithfully promised that, when her mistress’s trial was over, and every thing smooth and happy, she would marry Tom at once.  So she took the jokes below stairs with great composure; feeling, indeed, too proud and content to perplex herself much about any thing.

Nevertheless, her life was not easy, for Mrs. Ascott was very difficult to manage.  She resisted angrily all the personal sacrifices entailed by impending motherhood, and its terrors and forebodings used to come over her—­poor weak woman that she was!—­in a way that required all Elizabeth’s reasonings to counteract, and all her self-control to hide the presentiment of evil, not unnatural under the circumstances.

Yet sometimes poor Mrs. Ascott would take fits of pathetic happiness; when she busied herself eagerly over the preparations for the new-comer; would make Elizabeth take out, over and over again, the little clothes, and examine them with childish delight.  Sometimes she would gossip for hours over the blessing that was sent to her so late in life—­half-regretting that it had come so late; that she should be almost an old woman before her little son or daughter was grown up.

“Still, I may live to see it, you know:  to have a pretty girl to take on my arm into a ball-room, or a big fellow to send to College:  the Leafs always went to College in old times.  He shall be Henry Leaf Ascott, that I am determined on; and if it’s a girl, perhaps I may call her Johanna.  My sister would like it; wouldn’t she?”

For more and more, in the strange softening of her nature, did Selina go back to the old ties.

“I am not older than my mother was when Hilary was born.  She died, but that was because of trouble.  Women do not necessarily die in childbirth even at forty; and in twenty years more I shall only be sixty—­not such a very old woman.  Besides, mothers never are old; at least not to their children.  Don’t you think so, Elizabeth?”

And Elizabeth answered as she best could.  She too, out of sympathy or instinct, was becoming wondrous wise.

But I am aware all this will be thought very uninteresting, except by women and mothers.  Let me hasten on.