Barbara received her heartily, and they talked a little, lady Ann imagining herself very pleasing: she rarely condescended to make herself agreeable, and measured her success by her exertion. She found Barbara in such good spirits that she pronounced her heartless--not to her son, or to any but herself, who would not have come near her but for the money to be got with her. She begged her, notwithstanding, for the sake of her complexion, to leave her mother an hour or two now and then, and ride over to Mortgrange. Incessant watching would injure her health, and health was essential to beauty! Barbara protested that nothing ever hurt her; that she was the only person she knew fit to be a nurse, because she was never ill. When her ladyship, for once oblivious of her manners, grew importunate, Barbara flatly refused. “You must pardon me, lady Ann,” she said; “I cannot, and I will not leave my mother.” Then lady Ann thought it might be wise to make a little more of the mother to whom she seemed so devoted. She had imagined the daughter of the coarse woman must feel toward her as she did, and suspected a coarser grain in the daughter than she had supposed, because she was not disgusted with her mother. She did not know that eyes of love see the true being where other eyes see only its shadow; and shadows differ a good deal from their bodies. But meeting Mr. Wylder in the avenue as she returned, and stopping her carriage to speak to him, lady Ann changed her mind, and resolved to curry favour with the husband instead of the wife. For hitherto she had scarcely seen Mr. Wylder, and knew about him only by unfavourable hearsay; but she was charmed with him now, and drew from him a promise to go and dine at Mortgrange. Bab went singing back to her mother, who was never so ill that she did not like to hear her voice. She could not always bear it in the room, but outside she was never tired of it. So Bab went about the house singing like a mavis. But she never passed a servant, male or female, without ceasing her song to say a kind word; and her mother, who, now that she had got on a little, lay listening with her keenest of ears, knew by the checks and changes of Bab's song, something of what was going on in the house. If one asked Bab what made her so happy, she would answer that she had nothing to make her unhappy; and there was more philosophy in the answer than may at first appear. For certainly the normal condition of humanity is happiness, and the thing that should be enough to make us happy, is simply the absence of anything to make us unhappy. “Everything,” she would answer another time, “is making me happy.” “I think I _am_ happiness,” she said once. How could she _naturally_ be other than happy, seeing she came of happiness! “Il lieto fattore,” says Dante; “whose happy-making sight,” says Milton.