given up hope of ever hearing more of the _Betsy-Jane_ and had sent in
their claim upon the underwriters. Now that he was gone for ever,
she first felt a yearning, longing love for the kind cousin, the
dear friend, the sympathizing protector, whom she should never see
again;--first felt a passionate desire to show him his child, whom
she had hitherto rather craved to have all to herself--her own sole
possession. Her grief was, however, noiseless and quiet--rather to the
scandal of Mrs Wilson who bewailed her stepson as if he and she had
always lived together in perfect harmony, and who evidently thought
it her duty to burst into fresh tears at every strange face she
saw; dwelling on his poor young widow's desolate state, and the
helplessness of the fatherless child, with an unction as if she liked
the excitement of the sorrowful story.

So passed away the first days of Alice's widowhood. By and by things
subsided into their natural and tranquil course. But, as if the young
creature was always to be in some heavy trouble, her ewe-lamb began to
be ailing, pining, and sickly. The child's mysterious illness turned
out to be some affection of the spine, likely to affect health but not
to shorten life--at least, so the doctors said. But the long, dreary
suffering of one whom a mother loves as Alice loved her only child,
is hard to look forward to. Only Norah guessed what Alice suffered; no
one but God knew.

And so it fell out, that when Mrs Wilson, the elder, came to her one
day, in violent distress, occasioned by a very material diminution in
the value of the property that her husband had left her--a diminution
which made her income barely enough to support herself, much less
Alice--the latter could hardly understand how anything which did not
touch health or life could cause such grief; and she received the