fulness of sympathy.  “I wonder if she ever realizes how hard I have worked for her?” she thought.  “How completely I’ve given up my life?” And there rose in her thoughts the wish that her children could have stayed children forever.  “As long as they were little, they filled my life, but as soon as they get big enough for other things, they break away from me—­even Archibald will change when he goes away to school, next year, and I shall never have him again as he is now.”  At the very time, she knew, when she needed them most—­when middle-age was approaching—­her children were failing her not only as companions, but as a supreme and vital reason for living.  If they could have stayed babies, she felt that she should have been satisfied to go on forever with nothing else in her life; but in a little while they would grow up and begin to lead their own intense personal lives, while she, having outlived her usefulness, would be left with only her work, with only dressmaking and millinery for a life interest.  “Something is wrong with me,” she thought sternly; “the visit to the judge must have upset me.  I don’t usually have such wretched thoughts in the evening.”

“Did you bring me your school report, darling?” she asked.

Yes, Fanny had brought it, and she drew it forth reluctantly from the pages of a novel.  It was impossible to make her study.  She was as incapable of application as a butterfly.  “I thought you were going to do better this month, Fanny,” said Gabriella reproachfully.

“Oh, mother dear, I want to leave school.  I hate it!  Please let me begin to study for the stage.  You know you always said the study of Shakespeare was improving.”

They were in the midst of the argument when Archibald came in, and he showed little sympathy with Fanny’s dramatic ambition.

“The stage?  Nonsense!  What you want is to get safely married,” he remarked scornfully, and Gabriella agreed with him.  There was no doubt in her mind that for some women, and Fanny promised to be one of these, marriage was the only safeguard.  Then she looked at Archibald, strong, sturdy, self-reliant, and clever; and she realized, with a pang, that some day he also would marry—­that she must lose him as well as Fanny.

“I’ve had a letter from Pelham Forest, dear,” she said—­Pelham Forest was a school in Virginia—­“and I am making up my mind to let you go there next autumn.”

“And then to the University of Virginia where Grandfather went?”

“Yes, and then to the University of Virginia.”

Though she tried to speak lightly, the thought of the coming separation brought a pang to her heart.

“Well, I’d rather work,” said Archibald stoutly.  “I don’t want to go away to school.  I’d a long sight rather start in with a railroad or a steamship company and make my way up.”

“But, darling, I couldn’t bear that.  You must have an education.  It’s what I’ve worked for from the beginning, and when you’ve finished at the university, I want to send you abroad to study.  If only Fanny would go to college, too, I’d be so happy.”