Mary stole out in the afternoon, when the day was beginning to wane. It was not only that as soon as her anxieties were relieved the spell of the old associations came back: a far more serious pre-occupation was in her mind, though all was mystery round her. The question that had sprung up within her came back and back like a fitful wind through all the agitations and happiness of the day. Her body was altogether worn out by excitement and anxiety, and by the long vigil of that troubled night; but, as happens sometimes in such a case, her mind was only the more eager and alive, her senses keener to everything around. She had sat by Hetty’s bedside and talked all the day, talked till her throat and breast seemed to be strained with physical exertion, talked against time, against weariness, that her child’s mind might be filled with the peaceful image of home, so as to leave no room for those distracting images which had jarred her whole being. Mary felt the strain of that monologue almost more than any other form of fatigue. She was well used to it, as to all other forms of exhaustion. Talking to children both her own and others, telling stories, giving lessons, the sensation was not new to her; but it made the silence and sweet air very grateful, as, leaving Hetty once more asleep, with Miss Hofland established at her bedside, she stole out into the great quiet of nature, into the dewy park and wonderful serenity of the spring afternoon, as it began to soften into night. The grass had been growing all day, the flowers struggling, making their way upward, the young leaves unrolling their tightly-bound folds out of their sheaths; and now all seemed to have paused in the midst of that hopeful, cheerful progress, to rest a little, to get strength for a warmer effort still. Life, all thrilling through the awakened earth in every vein, in every pore, paused in the midst of that warm impulse to rest. She felt in sympathy with all the world, delivered from a terror beyond description,--from death, and worse than death, her very exhaustion adding to the refreshment and blessedness of that quiet and repose. For the moment, except for a vague sense in her mind of an uneasiness which she held at arm’s length, she was able to give herself up entirely to this tranquil sweetness. She wandered out, going round the old house, with every line of which her eyes were familiar, the dear old house, about which she had tripped in her childhood, when she had been “only Mary,” running everybody’s errands, doing what everybody told her--a little unconsidered happy creature, sent up and down, here and there, but never unkindly, never untenderly, she said to herself with tears in her eyes. Oh, never unkind! nothing but a little wholesome neglect, the carelessness of familiarity which in its way was sweet. She had not been like her own children, wrapped in love from their cradles, their little interests and pleasures put above everything; but