“Ah! lady dear,” exclaimed a crone, rising from a grave where she had been sitting, “don’t you remember old Betty?  They all said in the village you’d be too proud to look on your grandmother’s grave; but you’re not, I see.  Well, that’s good—­that’s good.  We had a funeral last week, and the vault of the old earl was broken in.  The stupid sexton stuck his pick in amongst the old bricks, and so the great man’s skull came tumbling out, and rolled beside the skull of Job Martin, the old cobbler; and the sexton laid them both on the edge of the grave, the earl’s skull and the cobbler’s skull, until he should fetch a mason to mend the vault, and—­what do you think?—­when the mason came, the sexton could not tell which was the earl’s skull and which was the cobbler’s!  Lady, you must understand how this is—­it’s all the same in a hundred years, according to the saying; and so it is.  None of them could tell which was the earl’s, and which the cobbler’s.  My skull may lie next a lady’s yet, and no one tell the difference.”

The lady and child hastened from the churchyard, and the old woman muttered, “To see that!  She’s not half as well to look at now as the farmer’s wife.  Ah!  ‘All is not gold that glitters!’” How happy it is for those who believe in the truth of this proverb, and from it learn to be content!

It might be a week after this occurrence that Helen sent for Rose.  The lady either was, or fancied herself better, and said so, adding, it was in her (Rose’s) power to make her happier than she had ever been.  Reverting to the period when her cousin visited her in London, she alluded to what she had suffered in becoming a mother, and yet having her hopes destroyed by the anxiety and impetuosity of her own nature.  “At first,” she said, “the trouble was anything but deep-rooted, for I fancied God would send many more, but it was not so; and now the title I so desired must go to the child of a woman—­Oh, Rose, how I do hate her!—­a woman who publicly thanks God that no plebeian blood will disgrace my husband’s title and her family.  I would peril my soul to cause her the pain she has caused me.”

“You do so now,” said Rose, gently but solemnly.  “Oh! think that this violence and revenge sins your own soul, and is every way unworthy of you.”

Helen did not heed the interruption.  “To add to my agony,” she continued, “my husband cherishes her son as if it were his own; the boy stands even now between his affections and me.  He has reproached me for what he terms my insensibility to his perfections, and says I ought to rejoice that he is so easily rendered happy—­only imagine this!  Rose, you must give me your daughter, to be to me as my own.  Her beauty and sweetness will at once wean my husband’s love from this boy; and, moreover, children brought up together—­do you not see?—­that boy will become attached to one of the ‘plebeian blood,’ and wedding her hereafter, scald to the core the proud heart of his mother, as she has scalded mine!”