Mrs. Lindsay, however, had more than once stood upon the threshold of another life, having followed a husband and two daughters to the silent tomb: and in her secret heart she suspected the small value of what she had purchased at so great a cost. It seemed hard indeed to deprive her beautiful children of a fashionable education, and the struggle was very severe; but the mother triumphed over worldly vanity, and Monsieur de la Beaumont was told that his services in the family as dancing-master were no longer desired. "One strange ting!" said monsieur; and the world at large thought the same. Mrs. Lindsay considered herself as having made a great sacrifice to affection, and sometimes feared that she might live to see the day when she should wish her little novices out of sight, somewhere. One thing she determined on, however; and that was to take as much of the world as she could get herself, and thus solace herself for what she was to lose in her daughters. It cannot be supposed, that with this resolution the mother would reserve time for the care and culture of these little ones, who were given over to Dora with but one hope--the forlorn one--that she would save them alive. This the old lady could not promise to do; for she understood that having the sentence of death in ourselves, we are not to trust human means and precautions, but only Him who raiseth the dead. She, however, cheerfully undertook the precious charge committed to her trust; glad from her heart that the poor lambs had been saved from the slaughter, and praying most earnestly that they might be claimed by the Great Shepherd, and gathered to his fold. Martha was a very quiet, thoughtful child, with speech and manner much beyond her years; she was not, therefore, strictly confined to the nursery, but allowed to mingle freely with her mother's guests. Emma, on the contrary, was much younger, and full of wayward humors. She greatly needed a mother; but the sacred writer has declared, "She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth." How many little hearts have proved the bitterness of that truth! God in mercy saved little Emma from this sad experience, by raising up for her infancy and childhood such a friend as was the pious, faithful Dora. "It is a promising bud," thought the good woman, "but it may wither even without the blight of fashion; so I will try to secure for it an immortal bloom."