“He gives you lots of things, doesn’t he?  Every thing you have?”

“Yes.”

“Do you like his doing it?”

“Very much indeed.”

“Then was that the reason you married him?  Aunt Henrietta said it was.”

Christian’s blood boiled.  And yet Letitia only repeated what she had been told.

“My child,” she said, feeling that now was the time to speak, and that the truth must be spoken even to a child, “your Aunt Henrietta makes a great mistake.  She says and believes what is not true.  I married your papa because I”—­(oh that she could have said “loved him!")—­“I thought him the best man in the world.  And so he is, as we all know well.  Don’t we, Arthur?”

“Hurrah!  Three cheers for papa!  The jolliest papa that ever was!” cried Arthur from the sofa, where, by his own special desire, he lay watching the end of the toilet.

Letitia was too ladylike to commit herself to much enthusiasm, but she smiled.  If there was a warm place in that poor little frigid heart, papa certainly had it, as in every heart belonging to him.

“You look quite pretty” said she, condescendingly.  “Some day when you go to parties you’ll dress me and make me look pretty too, and take me with you?  You won’t keep me shut up in the nursery till I am quite old, as Phillis says you will?”

“Did Phillis say that?” Christian answered, with a sore sinking of the heart at the utter impossibility that under such influences these children should ever learn to love her.

“Phillis is a fool,” cried Arthur, angrily.  “When I get well again, if ever she says one word to me of the things she used to say about mother, won’t I pitch into her, that’s all!”

Christian smiled—­a rather sad smile, but she thought it best to take no notice, and soon Phillis came and fetched the two away.

After they were gone the young step-mother stood by her bedroom fire, thinking anxiously of these her children, turning over in her mind plan after plan as to how she should make them love her.  But it seemed a very hopeless task still.

She looked into the blazing coals, and then began playing with a little chimney-piece ornament showing the day of the month—­21st of March.

Could it be possible that she had been married three months?  Three months since that momentous day when her solitary, self-contained life was swept out of the narrow boundaries of self forever—­made full and busy, ay, and bright too?  For it was not a sad face, far from it, which met her in the mirror above; it was a face radiant with youth and health, and the soft peacefulness which alone gives a kind of beauty.

Well, so best!  She had not expected this, but she did not wish it otherwise.

The clock struck eight.  She was, after all, ready too soon so she wrapped her white opera cloak around her, and went down to the drawing-room.  To pass the time, she thought she would sing a little, as indeed she now made a point of doing daily, and would have done, whether she cared for it or not, if only out of gratitude to the love which had delighted itself in giving her pleasure.