an agreeable sense of duty to add seriousness to his life; and he was never without occupation--meetings of committees, scraps of semi-public business, educational and other projects, which, for the moment at least, seemed full of interest to the world, made him feel himself a not unimportant, certainly not a useless, man. Mrs. Beresford, on her side, had the natural occupation of her housekeeping, and her child, whose education gave her much thought--so much thought that many people with full nurseries listened with a certain awe to her ideas of all that was necessary for her little girl, and sighed to think how much less was possible when there were six or seven little girls to think of. The child, however, was not so over-educated and over-cared for as might have been fancied; for the parents were young, as has been said, very fond of each other, and fond of their own way; which likings did not consist with the burden of dragging a small child with them wherever they went. The Beresfords liked to go about ‘honeymooning,’ as their friends called it, and as they themselves were not displeased to call it, by themselves, over the world. They would start sometimes quite suddenly, to the Riviera in the middle of winter, to escape London fogs and wintry chills; to Paris at Easter; to Scotland in the autumn; even to Norway sometimes, or such difficult places; and it stood to reason that they could not take the child with them when they started at a day’s notice on these delightful journeys. For their journeys were delightful. They were well enough off not to require to count the cost; they went lightly, with little luggage and no servants, and they went everywhere together. But it would have been bad for the little girl; therefore she stayed at home, under the care of the best of nurses, who had been Mrs. Beresford’s nurse before the child’s; and the father and mother, like two lovers, roamed lightly about the world. But when they were at home, Mrs. Beresford talked a great deal about education, and had plans enough to have educated six princesses, let alone one little girl of undistinguished lineage. It was a very lucky thing for all parties, their friends said, that they had but this one child. Had they been hampered by half-a-dozen, what could they have done? It would have changed their life completely. And one of their many felicities was, that whereas they were preserved from the old-maidishness of childless married persons by having a child, their freedom of action was preserved by the fact that they had but one.