He was a romantic adorer of womanhood, as a sort of divine mystery,—­a never-ending poem; and when his wife was long enough away from him to give scope for imagination to work, when she no longer annoyed him with the friction of the sharp little edges of her cold and selfish nature, he was able to see her once more in the ideal light of first love.  After all, she was his wife; and in that one word, to a good man, is every thing holy and sacred.  He longed to believe in her and trust her wholly; and now that Grace was going from him, to belong to another, Lillie was more than ever his dependence.

On the whole, if we must admit that John was weak, he was weak where strong and noble natures may most gracefully be so,—­weak through disinterestedness, faith, and the disposition to make the best of the wife he had chosen.

And so Lillie came home; and there was festivity and rejoicing.  Grace found herself floated into matrimony on a tide bringing gifts and tokens of remembrance from everybody that had ever known her; for all were delighted with this opportunity of testifying a sense of her worth, and every hand was ready to help ring her wedding bells.

CHAPTER XXVI.

MOTHERHOOD.

It is supposed by some that to become a mother is of itself a healing and saving dispensation; that of course the reign of selfishness ends, and the reign of better things begins, with the commencement of maternity.

But old things do not pass away and all things become new by any such rapid process of conversion.  A whole life spent in self-seeking and self-pleasing is no preparation for the most august and austere of woman’s sufferings and duties; and it is not to be wondered at if the untrained, untaught, and self-indulgent shrink from this ordeal, as Lillie did.

The next spring, while the gables of the new cottage on Elm Street were looking picturesquely through the blossoming cherry-trees, and the smoke was curling up from the chimneys where Grace and her husband were cosily settled down together, there came to John’s house another little Lillie.

The little creature came in terror and trembling.  For the mother had trifled fearfully with the great laws of her being before its birth; and the very shadow of death hung over her at the time the little new life began.

Lillie’s mother, now a widow, was sent for, and by this event installed as a fixture in her daughter’s dwelling; and for weeks the sympathies of all the neighborhood were concentrated upon the sufferer.  Flowers and fruits were left daily at the door.  Every one was forward in offering those kindly attentions which spring up so gracefully in rural neighborhoods.  Everybody was interested for her.  She was little and pretty and suffering; and people even forgot to blame her for the levities that had made her present trial more severe.  As to John, he watched over her day and night with anxious assiduity, forgetting every fault and foible.  She was now more than the wife of his youth; she was the mother of his child, enthroned and glorified in his eyes by the wonderful and mysterious experiences which had given this new little treasure to their dwelling.