for a low-born thing as she was.  She was well-spoken of by those who knew her; but what could she be with a butcher for a grandfather!  However, my poor infatuated son loved her to the last.  She was very pretty, I have heard—­young, and timid; but being of such fearfully low origin, of course she could not be recognised by my husband or myself!  We forbade my son all intercourse with us, unless he would separate himself from her; but the poor boy was perfectly mad, and he preferred this low-born wife to his father and mother.  They had a little baby, who was sent over to me when the wife died—­for, thank God! she did die in a few years’ time.  My son was restored to our love, and he received our forgiveness; but we never saw him again.  He took a fever of the country, and was a corpse in a few hours.  My second boy was in the navy—­a fine high-spirited fellow, who seemed to set all the accidents of life at defiance.  I could not believe in any harm coming to him.  He was so strong, so healthy, so beautiful, so bright:  he might have been immortal, for all the elements of decay that shewed themselves in him.  Yet this glorious young hero was drowned—­wrecked off a coral-reef, and flung like a weed on the waters.  He lost his own life in trying to save that of a common sailor—­a piece of pure gold bartered for the foulest clay!  Two years after this, my husband died of typhus fever, and I had a nervous attack, from which I have never recovered.  And now, what do you say to this history of mine?  For fifteen years, I have never been free from sorrow.  No sooner did one grow so familiar to me, that I ceased to tremble at its hideousness, than another, still more terrible, came to overwhelm me in fresh misery.  For fifteen years, my heart has never known an hour’s peace; and to the end of my life, I shall be a desolate, miserable, broken-hearted woman.  Can you understand, now, the valuelessness of my riches, and how desolate my splendid house must seem to me?  They have been given me for no useful purpose here or hereafter; they encumber me, and do no good to others.  Who is to have them when I die?  Hospitals and schools?  I hate the medical profession, and I am against the education of the poor.  I think it the great evil of the day, and I would not leave a penny of mine to such a radical wrong.  What is to become of my wealth?’—­

‘Your grandson,’ I interrupted hastily:  ‘the child of the officer.’

The old woman’s face gradually softened.  ‘Ah! he is a lovely boy,’ she said; ‘but I don’t love him—­no, I don’t,’ she repeated vehemently.  ’If I set my heart on him, he will die or turn out ill:  take to the low ways of his wretched mother, or die some horrible death.  I steel my heart against him, and shut him out from my calculations of the future.  He is a sweet boy:  interesting, affectionate, lovely; but I will not allow myself to love him, and I don’t allow him to love me!  But you ought to see him.  His hair is like my own daughter’s—­long,