Mr. Digby, it may be remarked, kept her so persistently busy, that she had small time to disturb herself with any sort of speculations. Lessons were lively. History was added to Latin and arithmetic; Rotha had a good deal to read, and troublesome sums to manage; and finally every remnant of spare leisure was filled up by a demand for writing. Mr. Digby did not frighten her by talking of compositions, but he desired her to prepare now an abstract of the history of the crusades, now of the Stuart dynasty, now of the American revolution; and now again of the rise of the art of printing, or the use and manufacture of gunpowder. Studying out these subjects, pondering them, writing and writing over her sketches, Rotha was both very busy and very happy; and then the handing over her papers to Mr. Digby, and his reading them, and his strictures upon them, were a matter of intense interest and delight; for though Rotha trembled with excitement she was still more thrilled with pleasure. For she was just at the age when the mind begins to open to a rapturous consciousness of its powers, and at the same time of the wonderful riches of the fields open to the exercise of them. In her happy ignorance, in her blessed inexperience, Rotha did not see what the days were doing with her mother; and if occasionally a flash of unwelcome perception would invade her mind, with the unbounded presumption of her young years she shut her eyes and refused to believe in it. But all the while Mrs. Carpenter was growing feebler and wasting to more of a shadow. Rotha still comforted herself that she had "a nice colour in her cheeks."