"Why are none of these prattlers mine?" she continued, pursuing the
tenor of her melancholy reflections. "Their parents can scarce find
them the coarsest food--and I, who could nurse them in plenty, I am
doomed never to hear a child call me mother!"

The thought sunk on her heart with a bitterness which resembled envy,
so deeply is the desire of offspring implanted in the female breast.
She pressed her hands together as if she were wringing them in the
extremity of her desolate feeling, as one whom Heaven had written
childless. A large stag-hound of the greyhound species approached at
this moment, and attracted perhaps by the gesture, licked her hands
and pressed his large head against them. He obtained the desired
caresses in return, but still the sad impression remained.

"Wolf," she said, as if the animal could have understood her
complaints, "thou art a noble and beautiful animal; but, alas! the
love and affection that I long to bestow, is of a quality higher than
can fall to thy share, though I love thee much."

And, as if she were apologizing to Wolf for withholding from him any
part of her regard, she caressed his proud head and crest, while,
looking in her eyes, he seemed to ask her what she wanted, or what he
could do to show his attachment. At this moment a shriek of distress
was heard on the shore, from the playful group which had been lately
so jovial. The Lady looked, and saw the cause with great agony.

The little ship, the object of the children's delighted attention, had
stuck among some tufts of the plant which bears the water-lily, that
marked a shoal in the lake about an arrow-flight from the shore. A
hardy little boy, who had taken the lead in the race round the margin