“You think me changed,” she said.

“Your ladyship has been ill and harassed.”

“Ah! we all change except Rose.”

“Ah!” replied the country bred husband, “she, indeed, is an exception; she could not even change for the better.”

And then the children, two such glorious boys, fine, manly fellows.  “And what will you be?” inquired her ladyship of the eldest.

“A farmer, my lady.”

“And you?”

“A merchant, I hope.”

“Your boys are as unambitious as yourself, Rose.”

“I fear not,” she answered; “this fellow wants to get into the middle class; but Mr. Stokes says the prosperity of a country depends more upon the middle class than upon either the high or the low.”

To this Helen made no reply, for her attention was occupied by the loveliness of Rose’s little girl.  The child inherited, in its perfection, the beauty of her family, and a grace and spirit peculiarly her own.  Rose could not find it in her heart to deprive her cousin of the child’s society, which seemed to interest and amuse her, and the little creature performed so many acts of affection and attention from the impulse of her own kind nature, that Helen, unaccustomed to that sort of devotion, found her twine around her sympathies in a novel and extraordinary manner; it was a new sensation, and she could not account for its influence.  After a week had passed, she was able to walk out, and met by chance the old clergyman.  He kissed the child, and passed on with a bow, which, perhaps, had more of bitterness in its civility than, strictly speaking, befitted a Christian clergyman; but he thought of the neglect she had evinced towards old Mrs. Myles, and if he had spoken, it would have been to vent his displeasure, and reprove the woman whose rank could not shield her from his scorn.  She proceeded towards the churchyard.  “Look, lady!” said little Rose; “father put that stone over that grave to please mother.  The relation who is buried there took care of my mother when she was a littler girl than I am now, and he told me to strew flowers over the grave, which we do.  See, I can read it—­’Sacred to the Memory of Mrs. Margaret Myles, who died the seventeenth of June, eighteen hundred’—­and something—­I can hardly read figures yet, lady.  ’This stone was placed here by her grateful relatives, E. and R.S.,’ meaning Rose and Edward Lynne.”

The coldness of the clergyman was forgotten in the bitterness of self-reproach.  “I was a fool,” she thought, as she turned away, “to fancy that my native air could be untainted by the destiny which has mocked me from my cradle.”