Mrs. Asquith kept to all appearance perfectly tranquil during the rest of that evening. It was a strange and affecting sight to see her by the side of Hetty’s chair, talking with a smiling countenance and every appearance of ease and an unburdened heart. She kept telling all the nursery stories, all the little family jokes, every kind of trifling happy circumstance, the commonplaces of the family, to her daughter’s dulled and heavy ear. The spectators could not understand this strange sight. _They_ were anxious, but she seemed free from care. They contemplated that little marble image of poor little Hetty with piteous eyes, shaking their heads aside, and saying to each other that, after all, the appearance of her mother had not done what was hoped. But the mother sat and smiled and talked as if she had been altogether unconscious that Hetty was not as she had been. Miss Hofland, though she could not understand, though she could not approve, this strange mode of action, got interested in spite of herself in all those unknown children, and found herself softly laughing in the background at the tricks of the boys, and Janey’s matronly demeanour, and the sweet little sayings of the baby. It all looked so pretty, and tender, and sweet. But how that woman could talk, and talk, and smile, and tell those stories with poor Hetty blanched and unresponsive like marble, wax--anything that you can think of which is most unlike flesh and blood, was what Miss Hofland could not understand. She felt very angry. She said to herself, “That woman has so many, she has no heart for this one;” and felt as if she loved poor Hetty better than her mother did, who showed so little feeling. Rhoda, who had stolen in when no one was looking, was, on the contrary, fascinated by Mrs. Asquith. She crept closer and closer, and at last curled herself up on the skirt of the stranger’s gown like a little dog, and listened, and laughed, and clapped her hands at all those stories. “Oh, tell me a little more about little Mary! Oh! what did baby say?” Rhoda cried, pushing closer and closer. Mrs. Asquith put one arm round the child, though without looking at her. She could think even of that strange child, who had been the cause of it all, with Hetty lying motionless there!