her, the calls from this one and that, the constant demand upon her! _She_ had no time to ask what her life was worth, no leisure to speculate how she could best fulfil its duties: all that and many another question was solved for her. Lady Jane watched the happy mother with an interest which was almost envy. And there were other thoughts which crossed her fancy too, and awakened much that was dormant in her. Once when she was sitting by her mother it suddenly came into her mind to contrast the Duchess’s life with her own. She looked at her Grace’s fair and genial presence, and watched her going over her accounts, and settling the affairs of her great house. There were many lines on the Duchess’s brow. She was an excellent economist on a great scale, as became her rank, but she had the disadvantage of being thwarted on every side by the prodigalities of her husband. It was not a happy moment at which to regard her; yet Lady Jane, looking at her mother, was suddenly moved to ask herself whether the Duchess would have been better, balancing all her outcomings and incomings serenely without any one to disturb her, had she never married. The question seemed a ludicrous one, but Lady Jane was prone to imaginations. She conjured up before herself a picture of this lady in a house where no one thwarted her; where there was no family to provide for, no Susan to keep a watchful eye upon what she was doing, no Jane to reflect upon her as an example of fate. She laughed to herself softly at the impossibility of this imagination. “What are you laughing at?” the Duchess asked, pausing with her pen in her hand and a look which was indicative of anything but an easy mind. “I was thinking--what if you had never married, mamma?”