"Thou lookest serious, Olive," said she. "Perhaps thou didst not find it such a paradise after all. Poor child, the world's a shallow cup, and the sooner we drain it the better. I think better of thee than that thou wilt long be content with such May games and vanities. Come to thy supper." But my honesty compelled me to speak. I did not wish Aunt Dorothy to think better of me than I deserved. "It _was_ rather like paradise, Aunt Dorothy," I said. "Paradise around a May-pole," said she compassionately. "Poor babe, poor babe!" "It was not the May-pole," said I, my face burning at having to bring out my hidden treasure of new love; "not the May-pole, but Lady Lucy." "Lady Lucy took a fancy to the child, Sister Dorothy," said my father, "and asked her to the Hall." And lowering his voice he added, "She thought her like Magdalene." I had scarcely ever heard him litter my mother's Christian name before, and now it seemed to fall from his lips like a blessing. Aunt Dorothy's brow darkened. "Thou wilt never let the child go, brother?" He did not at once reply. "Into the very jaws of Babylon, brother? The Lady Lucy is one of the favourites, they say, of the Popish Queen." "Very probably," said my father dryly, "I do not see how the Queen or any one else could help honouring or favouring the Lady Lucy." My heart bounded in acquiescence. "They say she has a chapel at the Hall fitted up on the very pattern of Archbishop Laud, and priests in coats of no one knows how many colours, and painted glass, and incense. Thou wilt never let the poor unsuspecting lamb go into the very lair of the Beast?" "There are jewels in many a dust-heap, Sister Dorothy, and the Lady Lucy is one," said my father a little impatiently, for Aunt Dorothy had the faculty of arousing the latent wilfulness of the meekest of men. "Let us say no more about it. I have made up my mind." Had he known how deep was the spell on me, he might have thought otherwise. For, ungrateful that I was, having lost my heart to this fair strange lady, I sat chafing at Aunt Dorothy's injustice, in a wide-spread inward revolt, which bid fair to extend itself to everything Aunt Dorothy believed or required. All her life-long care and affection, and patient (or impatient) toiling and planning for me and mine, blotted out by what I deemed her blind injustice to this object of my worship, who had but kissed me twice, and smiled on me, and said half-a-dozen soft words, and had won all my childish heart! And yet, looking back from these sober hours, I still feel it was not altogether an infatuation. Such true and tender motherliness as dwelt in Lady Lucy is the greatest power it seems to me that can invest a woman.