Poor Jenny! If she was not quite forgiving she was yet very pitiful, and her pride was little more than the outcome of her reserve; she had shown no want of a mother’s tenderness, although she had scarcely spoken to her child. Annie lay in her room upstairs, and was gently watched and cared for; little dainties were set by the side of the bed for her to eat; the beautiful hair that had hung loose on the door-step was now plaited loosely, and gently brushed and smoothed. She lay on her pillows, her eyes bright with fever, and one hand hanging languidly on the counterpane; it was the left hand, on which shone the wedding-ring. Now and then, as she lay, there would pass across her features a convulsive spasm as of sudden pain or fear; but with the determination that still belonged to her she would make an attempt to check it, although such attempts almost always resulted in terrible shudderings that shook the bed-clothes under which she lay. These shudderings must have been evidence of some internal conflict; but, if it were so, she would not express it in words. The little circle of gold was her mother’s consolation; but it was a desperate consolation to which even the mother dared not cling. Ah! do they know much of the feeling of a mother who imagine that at such a time it is composed of injured pride, of the dread of gossipping voices and a tarnished name? Is not its worst grief the knowledge, owned in silence, that the daughter, once close, is now distant, far away; that some unfathomable gulf has intervened between the souls of the mother and the child? Jenny had felt that gulf widening through the summer months, when she knew that her son and daughter had secrets of which they would not speak to her--and now, on one side at least, the ruin had come, and her daughter lay silent on her bed, whilst the village talked outside. Ah! what could she do, poor Jenny, the Jenny we have known, the gentle, upright, the timid, shrinking soul, but fulfil her house-duties with eyes too tired for tears, and surround her child with proofs of a mother’s tenderness? The authority that can rouse and awe the sinner is not for the affection that is strong in feebleness; the clarion voice that pierces and subdues finds no note in the accents of such a mother’s love. Yet Jenny had some strength in her calamity; her child was not left untended, or her house-work undone. It may be said that she should have trusted in religion, but then she had not been educated to understand such trust--to do her day’s duty well and carefully had, until now, made the chief part of the religion of her life.