“You have always done--everything for everybody--as long as I can remember,” said Rosalind, with tender enthusiasm. She shook her head. “I don’t think it has come to much use. I have been thinking over my life, over and over, these few days. It has not been very successful, Rosalind. Something has always spoiled my best efforts, I wonder if other people feel the same? Not you, my dear, you know nothing about it; you must not answer with your protestations. Looking back, I can see how it has always failed somehow. It is a curious thing to stand still, so living as I am, and look back upon my life, and sum it up as if it were past.” “It is because a chapter of it is past,” said Rosalind. “Oh, mamma, I do not wonder! And you have stood at your post till the last moment; no wonder you feel as if everything were over.” “Yes, I stood at my post: but perhaps another kind of woman would have soothed him when I irritated him. Your father--was not kind to me, Rosalind--” The girl rose and put her arms round Mrs. Trevanion’s neck and kissed her. “No, mother,” she said. “He was not kind. And yet, now that he has gone out of my life I feel as if nothing were left. People will think me a hypocrite. They will say I am glad to be free. But it is not so, Rosalind, remember: man and wife, even when they wound each other every day, cannot be nothing to each other. My occupation is gone; I feel like a wreck cast upon the shore.” “Mother! how can you say that when we are all here, your children, who can do nothing without you?” “My children--which children?” she said, with a wildness in her eyes as if she did not know what she was saying; and then she returned to her metaphor, like one thinking aloud; “like a wreck--that perhaps a fierce, high sea may seize again, a high tide, and drag out upon the waves once more. I wonder if I could beat and buffet those waves again as I used to do, and fight for my life--” “Oh, mother, how could that ever be?--there is no sea here.” “No, no sea--one gets figurative when one is in great trouble--what your father used to call theatrical, Rosalind. He said very sharp things--oh, things that cut like a knife. But I was not without fault any more than he; there is one matter in which I have not kept faith with him. I should like to tell you, to see what you think. I did not quite keep faith with him. I made him a promise, and-- I did not keep it. He had some reason, though he did not know it, in all the angry things he said.” Rosalind did not know what to reply; her heart beat high with expectation. She took her stepmother’s hand between hers, and waited, her very ears tingling, for the next word. “I have had no success in that,” Mrs. Trevanion said, in the same dreary way, “in that no more than the rest. I have not done well with anything; except,” she said, looking up with a faint smile and brightening of her countenance, “you, Rosalind, my own dear, who are none of mine.”