But other thoughts burn at the heart of Martha, as she walks onward by his side. Unawares and unconsciously her soul shudders at the sunshine--hates with fierce impatience the voices and cheerful hum of ordinary life, which grow audible as they approach Maidlin, and shrinks from returning home--home, where that one vacant place and absent voice, makes her heart desolate for ever. Through her bitter repinings, Miss Jean’s exultation passes with a ghastly terror, and Martha shivers to think that this unholy age may come upon her, and has her heart full of questionings almost impious. That this old woman, envious, degraded and miserable, should be spared in the earth to see many a hopeful head laid low; that poor old Dragon, basking in the sunshine, should live on from day to day, and see the children die; that she herself should remain, and Harry be taken away. Martha said, “Why? why?” and groaned within herself, and was burdened, hating the very light, and shrinking with burning impatience from the respectful looks and half-spoken sympathies of these cottar women at Maidlin Cross. She could not accept sympathy; she turned away with loathing from all except those who immediately shared her sorrow; and even them she bore with sometimes painfully--for who could understand _her_ grief? A blasting fiery unblessed grief burning her heart like a tempest--and a sullen gloom came over Martha’s face as she averted her head, and walked on steadily, closing her ears to the pleasant natural sounds which seemed to crowd upon her with so much greater distinctness than usual, that they chafed her disturbed mind into very fury. “The spirit of the Lord left Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him.” It was so with Martha now. Little Mary Paxton has been learning to-day to make a curtsey--for she is to go to school for the first time to-morrow; and her big sister, Mysie, says the young ladies curtsey when they enter the school-room at Blaelodge. Mary has blue eyes, little ruddy lips, always parted by two small white teeth, which appear between them; and cheeks, which the sun has ripened, according to his pleasure, all the summer through. In her little woollen frock and clean blue pinafore, Mary has been practising her new acquirement at the Cross. She is only four years old, and has a licence which the elder children have not; so little Mary rises up from the step of the Cross on which she has just seated herself for a rest, and coming forward with her small steps, pauses suddenly on the road before Martha, folds her little bare hands on her breast, and looking up with the sweet frank childish face, and the two small teeth fully revealed by her smile of innocent satisfaction, makes her little curtsey to the lady, and stands still to be approved with the confidence of her guileless years.