When she went in, she retired at once upstairs, and announced herself, through her maid, to have a headache, and had a cup of tea in her own room, to which her own children, little Fanny and Annie, a pair of inseparables, came noiselessly like two doves on the wing. Annie and Fanny liked nothing in the world so much as to get mamma to themselves like this, in the stillness of her room, with everybody else shut out. One was ten and the other eleven; they were about the same height, had the same flowing curly locks of light brown hair, the same rose-tinted faces, walked in each other’s steps, or rather flew about their little world of carpeted stairs and passages, together, always in sudden soft flights--like doves, as we have said, on the wing. “Is your head very bad, mamma?” they said; and the gentle hypocrite blushed as she replied. No, it was not very bad; a little quiet would make it quite well. They took off her “things” for her, and brought her her soft white dressing-gown, in which she looked like the mother of all the doves, and let down her hair, which was not much darker, and quite as abundant as their own--and gave her her cup of tea, thus soothing every tingling nerve; and by this time Lady Stanton’s head was not bad at all, though now and then one of them would administer eau-de-cologne or rosewater. She told them of the children she had seen--little orphans who had no mother--and the two crept closer to her, to hear of that awful, incomprehensible desolation, each clasping an arm of hers with two small, eager hands. To be without a mother! Annie and Fanny held their breath in reverential silence and pity; but wondered a little that it was the little boy (“called Nello--what a funny name!”) that mamma spoke of, not the girl, who was ten (“just the same age as me”). But not even the sympathy of her children, and the trance of interest which kept them breathless, could make Lady Stanton speak of the little girl. Her mother’s face! that face which had taken the best of everything in existence from Mary Ridley--how could Lady Stanton speak of it? She made some efforts to get over the feeling, but not with much success. But the rest restored her, and enabled her to appear, her headache quite charmed away, and her nerves still, at dinner. She took a little more care with her toilette than usual, by way of propitiation to the angry gods. And though Laura and Lydia were not much short of twenty years younger than their stepmother, it would have been an indifferent judge who had turned from her to them even in the fresh bloom of their youth. She came downstairs very conciliatory, ready to make the best of everything, and to make amends to them for all disloyal thoughts, and for having cheated them of their drive. “I hope your head is better, my Lady,” said Laura. “We have been wondering all the afternoon wherever you had gone.”