pitiful affronts and offences, which play such important parts in the
social drama of country society. She was a perfect Apostle-errant of
the order of Reconciliation; and wherever she went, cast out the devil
Sulkiness from all his strongholds--the lofty and the lowly alike. Our
good rector used to call her his Volunteer Curate; and declare that
she preached by a timely word, or a persuasive look, the best
practical sermons on the blessings of peace-making that were ever
composed.

With all this untiring good-nature, with all this resolute industry in
the task of making every one happy whom she approached, there was
mingled some indescribable influence, which invariably preserved her
from the presumption, even of the most presuming people. I never knew
anybody venturesome enough--either by word or look--to take a liberty
with her. There was something about her which inspired respect as well
as love. My father, following the bent of his peculiar and favourite
ideas, always thought it was the look of her race in her eyes, the
ascendancy of her race in her manners. I believe it to have proceeded
from a simpler and a better cause. There is a goodness of heart, which
carries the shield of its purity over the open hand of its kindness:
and that goodness was hers.

To my father, she was more, I believe, than he himself ever
imagined--or will ever know, unless he should lose her. He was often,
in his intercourse with the world, wounded severely enough in his
peculiar prejudices and peculiar refinements--he was always sure to
find the first respected, and the last partaken by _her._ He could
trust in her implicitly, he could feel assured that she was not only
willing, but able, to share and relieve his domestic troubles and
anxieties. If he had been less fretfully anxious about his eldest son;