Then came nearly five happy years, during which time her young mistress had found a warm and secure place in the good Yorkshire heart.  “She was that loving and that kind that Dick Burdas, the groom, used to say that he believed she was an angel as had took up with them dark folks, to show ’em what an angel was like.”  Mrs. Bentley went on: 

“She wasn’t always quite happy, and I wondered what brought the shadow into her face, and why she would at times sigh that deep that I could have cried.  After a bit I knew what it was.  It was the Maori in her.  She told me one night that she was a wicked woman, and ought never to have married Master Horace, for she got tired sometimes of the English house and its ways, and longed for her father’s whare; (that’s a native hut, miss).  She grieved something awful one day when she had been to see old Tim, the Maori who lives behind the stables.  She called herself a bad and ungrateful woman, and thought there must be some evil spirit in her tempting her into the old ways, because, when she saw Tim eating, and you know what bad stuff they eat, she had fair longed to join him.  She gave me a fright I didn’t get over for nigh a week.  She leaned her bonny head against my knee, and I stroked her cheek and hummed some silly nursery tune,—­for she was all of a tremble and like a child,—­and she fell asleep just where she was.”

“Poor thing!” said Alice, softly.

“Eh, but it’s what’s coming that upsets me, ma’am.  Eh, what suffering for my pretty lamb, and her that wouldn’t have hurt a worm!  Baby would be about six months old when she came in one day with him in her arms, and they were a picture.  His little hand was fast in her hair.  She always walked as if she’d wheels on her feet, that gliding and graceful.  She had on a sort of sheeny yellow silk, and her cheeks were like them damask roses at home, and her eyes fair shone like stars.  ’Isn’t he a beauty, Nana?’ she asked me.  ’If only he had blue eyes, and that hair of gold like my husband’s, and not these ugly eyes of mine!’ And as she spoke she sighed as I dreaded to hear.  Then she told me to help her to unpack her new dress from Paris, which she was to wear at the Rochester races the next day.  Master Horace always chose her dresses, and he was right proud of her in them.  And next morning he came into the nursery with her, and she was all in pale red, and that beautiful!  ’Isn’t she scrumptious, Nana?’ he said, in his boyish way.  ’Don’t spoil her dress, children.  How like her Marie grows!’ Those two little ones they had got her on her knees on the ground, and were hugging her as if they couldn’t let her go.  But when he said that, she got up very still and white.

“‘I am sorry,’ she said; ‘they must never be like me.’