Ellen lay winking at it when Cynthia Lennox came into the room and leaned over her.  The child cast a timid glance up at the tall, slender figure clad in a dressing-gown of quilted crimson silk which dazzled her eyes, accustomed as she was to morning wrappers of dark-blue cotton at ninety-eight cents apiece; and she was filled with undefined apprehensions of splendor and opulence which might overwhelm her simple grasp of life and cause her to lose all her old standards of value.

She had always thought her mother’s wrappers very beautiful, but now look at this!  Cynthia’s face, too, in the dim, rosy light, looked very fair to the child, who had no discernment for those ravages of time of which adults either acquit themselves or by which they measure their own.  She did not see the faded color of the woman’s face at all; she did not see the spreading marks around mouth and eyes, or the faint parallels of care on the temples; she saw only that which her unbiased childish vision had ever sought in a human face, love and kindness, and tender admiration of herself; and her conviction of its beauty was complete.  But at the same time a bitter and piteous jealousy for her mother and home, and all that she had ever loved and believed in, came over her.  What right had this strange woman, dressed in a silk dress like that, to be leaning over her in the morning, and looking at her like that—­to be leaning over her in the morning instead of her own mother, and looking at her in that way, when she was not her mother?  She shrank away towards the other side of the bed with that nestling motion which is the natural one of all young and gentle children even towards vacancy, but suddenly Cynthia was leaning close over her, and she was conscious again of that soft smother of violets, and Cynthia’s arms were embracing all her delicate little body with tenderest violence, folding her against the soft red silk over her bosom, and kissing her little, blushing cheeks with the lightest and carefulest kisses, as though she were a butterfly which she feared to harm with her adoring touch.

“Oh, you darling, you precious darling!” whispered Cynthia.  “Don’t be afraid, darling; don’t be afraid, precious; you are very safe; don’t be afraid.  You shall have such a little, white, new-laid egg for your breakfast, and some slices of toast, such a beautiful brown, and some honey.  Do you love honey, sweet?  And some chocolate, all in a little pink-and-gold cup which you shall have for your very own.”

“I want my mother!” Ellen cried out suddenly, with an exceedingly bitter and terrified and indignant cry.

“There, there, darling!” Cynthia whispered; “there is a beautiful red-and-green parrot down-stairs in a great cage that shines like gold, and you shall have him for your own, and he can talk.  You shall have him for your very own, sweetheart.  Oh, you darling! you darling!”

Ellen felt herself overborne and conquered by this tide of love, which compelled like her mother’s, though this woman was not her mother, and her revolt of loyalty was subdued for the time.  After all, whether we like it or not, love is somewhat of an impersonal quality to all children, and perhaps to their elders, and it may be in such wise that the goddess is evident.