made her mother aware of all that had gone on in that respect, and also of Mrs. Egerton and her opposition, which by times extended to Susie and by times ebbed away altogether, as circumstances, or humour, or the weather moved the parish queen in one way or another. Those reports were always quite simple, and often amusing, for Susie had a quiet way of telling a story, very circumstantial and clear, which sometimes gave her readers a more luminous and humorous view than she was herself aware of. But Susie made no comparison in respect to the ladies of Edgeley. Their intercourse with her was simple. It was her visitors of the other sex who evidently produced this effect of balance and comparison in her mind. ‘Mr. Percy gave me his view of it; he takes very strong views; but Mr. Cattley tells me----’ This was always the position in which these two appeared--Percy bringing forward all kinds of opinions, decisive of many matters, social and otherwise; but Mr. Cattley always adding a criticism or comment, something that changed the issue. Mrs. Sandford, for the fiftieth time, leaned back in her chair, and put down her pen, and asked herself, with a faint, lingering smile, which softened her stern face, what Susie meant. Susie was her own child, to whom her heart was soft, her companion, the sharer of all her thoughts. The sternness which she had shown to John had never touched his sister. Susie knew her mother entirely, knew what she meant, and what her past life had been. There were no secrets between these two. Of many things in his own antecedents, John was ignorant, but Susie knew everything. All Susie’s ways of thinking had grown under her mother’s eye. She had never thoroughly known her son, but she knew Susie through and through. This made the greatest difference in their mutual relations. Mrs. Sandford was to her daughter both tender, and soft, and gentle. Susie knew how to make her laugh, to bring tears to her eyes, whereas to John there was no laughter in her. All this, and even the contrast with John, who was in no such position, drew the mother and daughter more closely together. And it was with all the mingled sympathy and alarm, and tender prescience and pleasure, and regret of that relationship, that she saw the moment coming when the child would find some one else to be nearer to her, more a portion of herself and her life than even her mother.