looked at her intently, a queer, mischievous, yet penetrating look; then
broke into a broad, genial laugh, quite Bacchic and succumbed.
Christian, the solitary governess, first the worse than orphan, and then
the real orphan, without a friend or relative in the world, felt a child
clinging round her neck--a child toward whom, by the laws of God and
man, she was bound to fulfill all the duties of a mother--duties which,
from the time when she insisted on having a "big doll," that she might
dress it, not like a fine lady, but "like a baby," had always seemed to
her the very sweetest in all the world. Her heart leaped with a sudden
ecstasy, involuntary and uncontrollable.

"My bonny boy!" she murmured, kissing the top of that billowy curl
which extended from brow to crown--"my curl"--for Oliver
immediately and proudly pointed it to her. "And to think that his
mother never saw him. Poor thing! poor thing!"

Dr. Grey turned away to the window. What remembrances, bitter or
sweet, came over the widower's heart, Heaven knows! But he kept
them between himself and Heaven, as he did all things that were
incommunicable and inevitable, and especially all things that could
have given pain to any human being. He only said on returning,

"I knew, Christian, from the first, that you would be a good mother to
my children."

She looked up at him, the tears in her eyes, but with a great light
shining in them too.

"I will try."