'Of my-my mother.'

'The worst of her?' exclaimed Aunt Hester, with passionate vehemence; you must be mad, child. There is no worst. There was no bad connected with her from first to last; she was the best, and purest, and most long-suffering of women; and she is now an angel in heaven.'

Ella threw herself on her knees, and, with a sharp cry of pain, laid her face in Aunt Hester's lap.

Oh, how wicked I have been!' she sobbed, 'How wicked, and how vile, to have entertained a thought of ill of her who bore me!'

Aunt Hester looked down on her with an indescribable gentleness, and softly smoothed the wandering tresses that hung about her knees.

It is a sad and shameful story, darling; but the sadness was your mother's, and the shame—another's. She suffered from the slander of evil tongues; but she was sinned against, not sinning. Let us not think of it-let us not speak of it.'

Alas! it is easy to say let us not think' of this or that; but there are thoughts which have

more force than deeds with us, and are far more importunate. Ella's mind had indeed been relieved of one burthen-the terrible suspicion of the wrong-doing of the mother she had never known; but it had been replaced by one of almost equal weight, the conviction of the wrong-doing of the father whom she had known.

'Were papa-and mamma-separated?' she presently whispered; actually separated?'

'She obtained a divorce from him,' was the reply, in a tone which implied compassion indeed, but also the desire of the speaker to be quite distinct upon that matter. that she came to live with me. passed the love of sisters, but she had exchanged it for.

'It was then Our love had

in an evil hour No matter; it

was always hers, and waited for her. I changed the name which had once been hers (because she wished it), to avoid recognition and to efface the past. She died when you were an unconscious infant, in these loving arms; but her heart was with you to the last. "My poor child!" were her last words.'

'God help me! What am I to think-what am I to do?' cried Ella despairingly.

Imitate her goodness, my darling; revere her memory,' returned Aunt Hester. You can do nothing more, and she needs nothing, being in heaven, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are rest.' She stooped down and kissed her niece's cheek. I will leave you for a little to yourself,' she said.

This is the last time I shall speak about the past, my child. If I could have spared you, 1 would have done so; but the truth had to be told.'

291

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE CHURCHYARD.

Is there anything worse than loss?

To say he has departed,

His voice, his face is gone—
To feel impatient-hearted,

Yet know we must bear on.

Is not that the very climax of human woe? To most of us, thank heaven, it is so; but to some few exceptional sufferers there is a still more bitter drop to be drained from the cup of life. It is the conviction forced upon us, after the loved one's death, that he was not so worthy as we had thought him to be. Ella Josceline was by nature too sensible, by habit too truthful, by disposition too genuine, to have made for herself a picture of her father's character, even though he was lost to her, of

the saintly or even the sentimental sort. She was aware that he had been a man of the world, and though she did not know all that is signified by that term (nor the tenth of it), she knew enough to dispel the mere conventional filial illusions. On the other hand, she had not only admired him and felt a pride in him, but had loved him for his own sake, quite independently of the love he had borne to her, and which had been naturally reciprocated. Whatever might have been his faults—and she had admitted to herself the probability of their existence-she had always believed him kind; and now that he was in his grave, and all his acts and words of love for her were fresh in her memory (which, indeed, as respected herself, retained nothing to his disadvantage), she had been suddenly given to understand that it was not so that, in a word, he had been cruel, faithless, and, where it behoved him to have sought forgiveness, implacable and vindictive. For that he had maintained so ominous a reticence concerning his married life from shame or self-reproach, she knew him better than to