Leaving him to bear as best he could both his own sorrowful reflections and the perpetual nagging of the old lady, one of whose weaknesses it was never to endure patiently what she in her jealous susceptibility denominated being “kept out” of what was going on, we will follow Honor to her interview with Colonel Norcott’s long-suffering mother. Mrs. Baker was one of those women--and they are not a few--who seem from their earliest girlhood marked out for suffering. Her home-life--owing to circumstances needless here to mention--had been so wearying and unendurable, that she had at eighteen married a man for whom she entertained no stronger feeling than an absence of dislike. Mr. Norcott, who, as we already know, was a country squire of good estate, had endeared himself to her by his sterling qualities, and by his unfailing affection for herself. During his lifetime they were, however, rendered for many years unhappy by the illness and deaths of five children successively born to them. In early infancy the little Norcotts were much, as other beings of their age, subject to occasional illnesses, but not apparently deficient in vigour and stamina. To what the mysterious ailment was owing that, one after the other, as they attained the age of twelve or thereabouts, cut off those till then seemingly healthy children, and condemned them to an early tomb, the doctors found it hard to say. It had been very hard to see them die; very, very grievous to watch the fading of the healthy colour, the weakening of the vigorous limbs, the slow and stealthy, but too sure, advance of death. As each of her beloved ones was removed from the little place that it had filled on earth to a happier home above, Mrs. Norcott--weeping as one that would not be comforted--had complained in bitterness of spirit that there was no sorrow like unto her sorrow, and that the burden that had been laid upon her was greater than she could bear. And yet she lived through it--lived through it to the wonder of those who, not having so suffered, are ignorant how much the human heart can endure, and yet exist--lived also to confess, in the solitude of her own chamber, where no eye but God’s could look into her heart, that death was not the bitterest of mortal woes; for that a wounded spirit--a spirit crushed by a sense of shame, and bowed down by the burden of a loved one’s sin--is of all earthly evils the most difficult of endurance.