which died away at last into heavy slumber, as body and mind alike gave way before the strain.  Sweet fool! she knew not—­how could she know?—­that she might be rearing in herself the seeds of idiotcy and death:  but who that applauds a Rachel or a Ristori, for being able to make awhile their souls and their countenances the homes of the darkest passions, can blame her for enacting in herself, and for herself alone, incidents in which the highest and holiest virtue takes shape in perfect tragedy?

But soon another, and a yet darker cause of sorrow arose in her.  It was clear, from what Willis had told her, that she had held the lost belt in her hand.  The question was, how had she lost it?

Did her mother know anything about it?  That question could not but arise in her mind, though, for very reverence she dared not put it to her mother; and with it arose the recollection of her mother’s strange silence about the matter.  Why had she put away the subject, carelessly, and yet peevishly, when it was mentioned?  Yes.  Why?  Did her mother know anything?  Was she—?  Grace dared not pronounce the adjective, even in thought; dashed it away as a temptation of the devil; dashed away, too, the thought which had forced itself on her too often already, that her mother was not altogether one who possessed the single eye; that in spite of her deep religious feeling, her assurance of salvation, her fits of bitter self-humiliation and despondency, there was an inclination to scheming and intrigue, ambition, covetousness; that the secrets which she gained as class-leader too, were too often (Grace could but fear) used to her own advantage; that in her dealings her morality was not above the average of little country shopkeepers; that she was apt to have two prices; to keep her books with unnecessary carelessness when the person against whom the account stood was no scholar.  Grace had more than once remonstrated in her gentle way; and had been silenced, rather than satisfied, by her mother’s commonplaces as to the right of “making those who could pay, pay for those who could not;” that “it was very hard to get a living, and the Lord knew her temptations,” and “that God saw no sin in His elect,” and “Christ’s merits were infinite,” and “Christians always had been a backsliding generation;” and all the other commonplaces by which such people drug their consciences to a degree which is utterly incredible, except to those who have seen it with their own eyes, and heard it with their own ears, from childhood.

Once, too, in those very days, some little meanness on her mother’s part brought the tears into Grace’s eyes, and a gentle rebuke to her lips:  but her mother bore the interference less patiently than usual; and answered, not by cant, but by counter-reproach.  “Was she the person to accuse a poor widowed mother, struggling to leave her child something to keep her out of the workhouse?  A mother that lived for her, would die for her, sell her soul for her, perhaps—­”