Tom at first was exceedingly savage at this: by degrees he got more reconciled, and met his sweet-heart now and then for a few minutes at the area gate or wrote her long poetical letters, which he confided to some of her fellow-servants, who thereby got acquainted with their secret. But it mattered little, as Elizabeth had faithfully promised that, when her mistress's trial was over, and every thing smooth and happy, she would marry Tom at once. So she took the jokes below stairs with great composure; feeling, indeed, too proud and content to perplex herself much about any thing. Nevertheless, her life was not easy, for Mrs. Ascott was very difficult to manage. She resisted angrily all the personal sacrifices entailed by impending motherhood, and its terrors and forebodings used to come over her--poor weak woman that she was!--in a way that required all Elizabeth's reasonings to counteract, and all her self-control to hide the presentiment of evil, not unnatural under the circumstances. Yet sometimes poor Mrs. Ascott would take fits of pathetic happiness; when she busied herself eagerly over the preparations for the new-comer; would make Elizabeth take out, over and over again, the little clothes, and examine them with childish delight. Sometimes she would gossip for hours over the blessing that was sent to her so late in life--half-regretting that it had come so late; that she should be almost an old woman before her little son or daughter was grown up. "Still, I may live to see it, you know: to have a pretty girl to take on my arm into a ball-room, or a big fellow to send to College: the Leafs always went to College in old times. He shall be Henry Leaf Ascott, that I am determined on; and if it's a girl, perhaps I may call her Johanna. My sister would like it; wouldn't she?" For more and more, in the strange softening of her nature, did Selina go back to the old ties. "I am not older than my mother was when Hilary was born. She died, but that was because of trouble. Women do not necessarily die in childbirth even at forty; and in twenty years more I shall only be sixty--not such a very old woman. Besides, mothers never are old; at least not to their children. Don't you think so, Elizabeth?" And Elizabeth answered as she best could. She too, out of sympathy or instinct, was becoming wondrous wise. But I am aware all this will be thought very uninteresting, except by women and mothers. Let me hasten on. By degrees, as Mrs. Ascott's hour approached, a curious tranquility and even gentleness came over her. Her fretful dislike of seeing any face about her but Elizabeth's became less. She even endured her husband's company for an hour of an evening; and at last humbled her pride enough to beg him to invite her sisters to Russell Square from Saturday to Monday, the only time when Hilary could be spared. "For we don't know what may happen," said she to him, rather seriously.