But Laurence had been beforehand, and with plausible promises and penitential tears, and an adroit parade of her little Willie, also in tears “for mamma,” won her over to pardon, and to give him another trial; and not all Mr. Ashton’s eloquence, nor Mrs. Ashton’s proverbial battery, could win her from her decision. “My dear mother,” said she, “remember you told me ‘what could not be cured must be endured,’ and that ‘as I made my bed so must I lie.’ It is a long lane, mother, that has never a turn, I have heard you say many a time; and who knows but Laurence may take a turn now, and reform? At all events, it is my duty to give him a fair trial, and keep my own wayward nature in check, so as not to provoke him; and I must not leave Willie alone with that woman. I think Mr. Clegg would say I am right.” I am afraid she overrated Mr. Clegg’s magnanimity much as she overrated her wild husband’s promised reformation, for her decision struck a pang in the heart of Jabez, little dreamed of by Ellen. Indeed, it cost him a sore struggle to subdue his concern for Augusta within the bounds of duty to his own wife, whose many virtues were gradually winning their way into his heart, and towards whom his attention never relaxed. CHAPTER THE FORTY-SIXTH. THE MOWER WITH HIS SCYTHE. Years went by—Laurence had promised to remove Sarah Mostyn, but the woman laughed, refused to stir, and he let her remain—a thorn in his wife’s side—training up the boy she had nursed, and whom he idolised, to scorn and jeer at his own mother; whilst her red-haired girl ran wild about the place as a young hare. He broke out from time to time, and his wife was the sufferer; he horse-whipped her, shot at her, and tortured her in every way that malignity could devise. No wonder that so many tiny coffins of immature babes should be carried from the gates of the Fallowfield Grange. No wonder if Augusta began to compare her lot with Ellen’s, and to repent her scorn of a true heart because of its plebeian origin.