She would have none of their spiritual thaumaturgy--none of that unreal kind of transformation with which they had tried to modify their first teaching. There was no satisfaction in imagining mamma something different from her former self--no more the real, fervid, passionate, jealous Pepita than those pear-shaped transparent bags, so logically constructed by Mrs. Corfield's philosopher, are like the ideal angels of loving fancy. If mamma saw and knew what was going on here at this present moment--and Mrs. Birkett was not the bold questioner to doubt this continuance of interest--she felt as she would have felt when alive, and she would be angry, jealous, weeping, unhappy. Mrs. Birkett was puzzled what to say for the best to this uncomfortable fanatic, this unreasonable literalist. When believers have to formularize in set words their hazy notions of the feelings and conditions of souls in bliss, they make but a lame business of it; and nothing that the dear woman could propound, keeping on the side of orthodox spirituality, carried comfort or conviction to Leam. Her one unalterable answer was always simply, "I know mamma: I know what she is feeling," and no argument could shake her from her point. At last Mrs. Birkett gave up the contest. "Well, my child," she said, sighing, "I can only hope that the constant presence of your stepmother, her kindness and sweetness, will in time soften your feeling toward her." Leam looked at her earnestly. "It is not for myself," she said: "it is for mamma." And she said it with such pathetic sincerity, such an accent of deep love and self-abandonment to her cause, that the rector's wife felt her eyes filling up involuntarily with tears. Wrong-headed, dense, perverse as Leam was, her filial piety was at the least both touching and sincere, she said to herself, a pang passing through her heart. Adelaide would not speak of her if she were dead as this poor ignorant child spoke of her mother. Yet she had been to Adelaide all that the best and most affectionate kind of English mother can be, while Pepita had been a savage, now cruel and now fond; one day making her teeth meet in her child's arm, another day stifling her with caresses; treating her by times as a woman, by times as a toy, and never conscientious or judicious. All the same, Leam's fidelity, if touching, was embarrassing as things were; so was her belief in the continued existence of her mother. But what can be done with those uncompromising reasoners who will carry their creeds straight to their ultimates, and will not be put off with eclectic compromises of this part known and that hidden--so much sure and so much vague? Mrs. Birkett determined that her husband should talk to the child and try to get a little common sense into her head, but she doubted the success of the process, perhaps because in her heart she doubted the skill of the operator. By this time they reached the window, and the woman and the girl passed through into the room.