“Well, when my lady got about again, they say if she was mad at their coming all on a heap, she was madder still at their name.  Bible wasn’t grand enough for her!  I did hear tell that she throwed her slipper at her husband’s head, and was like to go into fits.  So to content her he came down, and took each one to Church, and had a fine London name of my Lady’s choosing tacked on in parson’s register for them to go by; but to my mind it ain’t like their christened name.  Mine here got called for her share Amoretta.”

“A little Love,” cried Aurelia.  “Oh, that is pretty.  And what can your name be, my dear little Fay?  Will you tell me again?”

When repeated, it was plainly Fidelia, and it appeared that Hope had been also called Letitia.  As to age, Mrs. Wheatfield knew it was five years last Michaelmas since the child had been brought to her from whom she was so loth to part that she knew not how to go when her husband came for her in his cart.  He was a farmer, comfortably off, though very homely, and there were plenty of children at home, so that she had been ill spared to remain at the Park till Aurelia’s arrival.  Thus she took the opportunity of going away while the little one was asleep.

Aurelia asked where she lived now.  At Sedhurst, in the next parish, she was told; but she would not accept a promise that her charge should soon be brought to visit her.  “Better not, ma’am, thank you all the same, not till she’s broke in.  She’ll pine the less if she don’t see nor hear nothing about the old place, nor Daddy and Sally and Davie.  If you bring her soon, you’ll never get her away again.  That’s the worst of a nurse-child.  I was warned.  It just breaks your heart!”

So away went the good foster-mother sobbing; and Aurelia’s charge began.  Fay claimed her instantly to explore the garden and house.  The child had been sent home alone on the sudden illness of her nurse, and had been very forlorn, so that her cousin’s attention was a great boon to her.  Hope was incited to come out; but Jenny Bowles kept a jealous watch over her, and treated every one else as an enemy; and before Aurelia’s hat was on, came the terrible woe of Amoret’s awakening.  Her sobs and wailings for her mammy were entirely beyond the reach of Aurelia’s soothings and caresses, and were only silenced by Molly’s asseveration that the black man was at the door ready to take her into the dark room.  That this was no phantom was known to the poor child, and was a lurking horror to Aurelia herself.  No wonder that the little thing clung to her convulsively, and would not let her hand go for the rest of the day, every now and then moaning out entreaties to go home to mammy.