Pettlechass, had paid a visit at Glenfern en passant. How so desirable an event was to be accomplished was the difficulty.  By the death of his father a variety of business and an extent of farming had devolved upon Mr. Douglas which obliged him to fix his residence at Glenfern, and rendered it impossible for him to be long absent from it.  Mrs. Douglas had engaged in the duties of a nurse to her little boy, and to take him or leave him was equally out of the question.

In this dilemma the only resource that offered was that of sending Mary for a few months to her mother.  True, it was a painful necessity; for Mrs. Douglas seldom heard from her sister-in-law, and when she did, her letters were short and cold.  She sometimes desired “a kiss to her (Mrs. Douglas’s) little girl,” and once, in an extraordinary fit of good humour, had actually sent a locket with her hair in a letter by post, for which Mrs. Douglas had to pay something more than the value of the present.  This was all that Mary knew of her mother, and the rest of her family were still greater strangers to her.  Her father remained in a distant station in India, and was seldom heard of.  Her brother was gone to sea; and though she had written repeatedly to her sister, her letters remained unnoticed.  Under these circumstances there was something revolting in the idea of obtruding Mary upon the notice of her relations, and trusting to their kindness even for a few months; yet her health, perhaps her life, was at stake, and Mrs. Douglas felt she had scarcely a right to hesitate.

“Mary has perhaps been too long an alien from her own family,” said she to herself; “this will be a means of her becoming acquainted with them, and of introducing her to that sphere in which she is probably destined to walk.  Under her uncle’s roof she will surely be safe, and in the society of her mother and sister she cannot be unhappy.  New scenes will give a stimulus to her mind; the necessity of exertion will brace the languid faculties of her soul, and a few short months, I trust, will restore her to me such and even superior to what she was.  Why, then, should I hesitate to do what my conscience tells me ought to be done?  Alas! it is because I selfishly shrink from the pain of separation, and am unwilling to relinquish, even for a season, one of the many blessings Heaven has bestowed upon me.”  And Mrs. Douglas, noble and disinterested as ever, rose superior to the weakness that she felt was besetting her.  Mary listened to her communication with a throbbing heart and eyes suffused with tears; to part from her aunt was agony; but to behold her mother—­she to whom she owed her existence, to embrace a sister too—­and one for whom she felt all those mysterious yearnings which twins are said to entertain towards each other—­oh, there was rapture in the thought, and Mary’s buoyant heart fluctuated between the extremes of anguish and delight.