conscious of a pleasant thrill at the sound of the new name, coming
upon her so suddenly. Strange it was; and ah! how differently it came
to her from the way it comes upon most women--gradually, deliciously,
with long looking forward and tremulous hope and fear--still it was
pleasant. The maternal instinct was so strong that even imaginary
motherhood seemed sweet. She bent forward to embrace the children,
with tears in her eyes, when Letitia said, in a sharp, unchildlike voice,

"People can't have two mammas; and our mamma is buried in the New
Cemetery. Aunts took us there yesterday afternoon."

Had the little girl chosen the sharpest arrow in her aunts' quiver--nay,
bad she been Miss Gascoigne herself, she could not have shot more
keenly home. For the dart was barbed with truth--literal truth; which,
however, sore it be, people in many difficult circumstances of life are
obliged to face, to recognize, and abide by--to soften and subdue if they
can--but woe betide them if by any cowardly weakness or shortsighted
selfishness, they are tempted to deny it as truth, or to overlook and
make light of it.

Painful as the position was--so painful that Dr. Grey was quite
overcome by it, and maintained a total silence--Christian had yet the
sense to see that it was a position inevitable, because it was true.
Bitterly as the child had spoken--with the bitterness which she had been
taught--yet she had only uttered a fact. In one sense, nobody could
have two mothers; and Christian, almost with contrition, thought of the
poor dead woman whose children were now taught to call another
woman by that sacred name. But the pang passed. Had she known the
first Mrs. Grey, it might not have been so sharp; in any case, here was
she herself--Dr. Grey's wife and the natural guardian of his children.