‘That was the world for her,’ said the Baronet, whose demeanour was at times most kind and considerate, and who treated her with the respect due from a gentleman to a lady, though occasionally he assumed a boldness which brought the hot blood to her cheek and filled her with alarm. Once upon a time, it is said, an old Scotch beadle, with the astute utterance of his class, went a-courting. ‘Jeannie,’ said he, as he took the object of his affection into the parochial cemetery, and pointed to some graves in a remote corner, ‘that’s whaur my people lie. Would ye like to lie with them?’ Jeannie answered in the affirmative, and the happy pair soon became man and wife. In the same way the Baronet threw open to the dazzled eyes of this fatherless country girl all the usual resorts of the gay world in all their pomp and glory, and she was delighted, as she had not the experience to tell her how much was tinsel, how little of it was real, how much of it was selfishness, and nothing more. Her heart warmed towards her benefactor. Confident in her beauty and his goodness of heart, she feared no harm. In the circle in which she moved she achieved a complete success. The women were very envious, and the men were as foolish as most men are where a pretty woman is concerned. Young people think little of what is felt for them by their fathers and mothers. The cynic may say, ‘Why should they? I did not bring myself into existence; and what has life done for me but to make me toil for labour that profiteth not, to clothe me with a carcase that shall soon be dissolved in death, to give me a mind that utterly, after all its endeavour, fails to understand even what passes under my very nose, to say nothing of the mysteries which lie around.’ But most of us feel, nevertheless, that our fathers and mothers have claims on us that we can never sufficiently repay them for—the care and love which rocked us in the cradle, which gave joy and happiness to our early homes, which guarded us in youth, which helped to plant us out in the world—a love the memory of which lasts as long as life. The worst of it is that frequently we do not feel this till it is too late, till we can make no ear that it would rejoice to listen to such with rapture is stilled by the cold hand of death. I can never forget a picture of a girl weeping at her mother’s grave. It was an illustration to one of Jane Taylor’s simple poems, as follows: ‘Oh, if she would but come again, I think I’d vex her so no more.’