sorrowfully, I could not bear it. "I formed my own misery, dearest
mother; you had nothing to do with it."

"You think so now, my love," she answered, with her usual fondness; "but
if my friends see you gloomy and sad, and evidently discontented,
longing for pleasures which are not offered to you in London, only
dwelling on visions of the past, and notions tending to the indulgence
of romance, what will they think? will not my judgment be called in
question? and more, they know how very much I prefer a country to a
London life, domestic pleasures, to those of society, and they may
imagine, and with some probability, that to indulge my selfish wishes,
I have disregarded the real interests of my children."

"They cannot, they will not think so," I passionately said. "They can
never have known you who form such conclusions." Would you not have
agreed with me, dear Mary, and can you not fancy the wretchedness
mamma's words inflicted?

"My love," she replied, with a smile, "they will not fancy they do not
know me; they will rather imagine they must have been deceived in their
opinion; that I am not what I may have appeared to them some few years
ago. The character of a mother, my Emmeline, is frequently judged of by
the conduct of her children; and such conclusions are generally correct,
though, of course, as there are exceptions to every rule, there are to
this, and many a mother may have been unjustly injured in the estimation
of the world, by the thoughtless or criminal conduct of a wilful and
disobedient child. I have been so completely a stranger to London
society the last sixteen years, that my character and conduct depend
more upon you and Caroline to be raised or lowered in the estimation of
my friends and also of the world, than on any of the young people with