equal,” she was saying in her soul. Was it, as Nature suggested, with natural groans, because He loved her less--or, as the minister said, because He loved her more, that God sent upon her those pangs, and demanded from her those sacrifices? Thus she cried out of the depths, not knowing what she said. “If I had but had my Jeanie!” the poor woman moaned to herself, with a vision of a consoling angel, a daughter, another dearer, fairer self, who would have helped to bear all her burdens. But God had not afforded her that comfort, the dearest consolation to a woman. When she had wept out those few bitter tears, that are all of which the heart is capable when it is no longer young, she gathered herself up out of the darkness and prepared to go back again to Colin’s bedside. Though she had received no answer to her question--though neither God Himself nor His angels, nor any celestial creature, had gleamed through the everlasting veil, and given her a glimpse of that Divine meaning which it is so hard to read--there was a certain relief in the question itself, and in the tears that had been wrung out of her heart. And so it was that, when Matty Frankland came lightly out of the billiard-room, on her way to dress for dinner, Mrs. Campbell, whom she met coming in from the terrace, did not appear to her to bear a different aspect from that which the Mistress of Ramore had borne in other days. Matty did not lose a minute in making her advances to Colin’s mother. She was, indeed, extremely sorry, and had even been conscious of a passing thought similar to that which had struggled passionately into being, both in Colin’s mind and in his mother’s--a passing sense of wonder why Harry, who was good for nothing in particular, should have been saved, and Colin, who was what Miss Matty called “so very clever,” should have been the sufferer. Such a doubt, had it gone deep enough--had it become an outcry of the soul, as it was with the others--would have made an infidel of that little woman of the world. She ran to Mrs. Campbell, and took her hand, and led her into the billiard-room, the door of which stood open. “Oh, dear Mrs. Campbell, come and tell me about him,” she said; and, as it had been the conjunction of a little real feeling with her habitual wiles that brought Colin under her influence, the same thing moved his mother at least to tolerate the inquiry. She drew away her hand with some impatience from the little enchantress, but her tender heart smote her when she saw an involuntary tear in Matty’s eye. Perhaps, after all, it was less her fault than her misfortune; and the Mistress followed the girl into the room with less dislike, and more toleration, than she could have supposed possible. It might be, after all, the older people--to whom worldliness came by nature, as she was disposed to think--who were to blame.