CHAPTER XX.—(Continued.)

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 19, 4 September 1885, Page 5

CHAPTER XX.— (Continued.)

She began to pity Aunt Martha, with a pity which she bad never thought her worthy of before ; for she, too, had lost her love, and the bright promise of her youth ; but then she had lived down her griuf, and cou'd fatten cows lor the fair ; could speak of Simon of Tobereevil, and laugh in the same breath ; while there could be no pity great enough in the wond to avail the loneliness of May Mourne, spinster, even when the twenty years of her age should come, in time, to be thricefold. The blooming oval face was growing white and pointed, her step was slow and weary about the house. She read aloud to Cnriatopher as t c sat, six feet of patient convalescence, in the great arm-chair at the parlour window, watching ebb away tediously the last remnant of time in which it was still actually possible for him to avert his worldly ruin. Her voice was monotonous, at times almost harsh, and jarred on her own ears, and made her task irksome. The best thing about the effort was that it was easirr than talking, whea it seemed that there was nothing she wanted to say except : •' Why does not Paul come back ? " Neither she nor Christopher took in the meaning of one word that she read, as the young voice went on telling forth the scenes of a play in a plaintive recitative, across which there swept, from time t<> time, some brusque and discordant note.

And all this time Auat Martha was at rest about her, seeing her so qui'it, and bo willing to be useful. If her cheeks were white, the bluum had gone bo gradually that the good lady did not miss it. She uad feared some weeks ago that her pretty maid might too well like that Paul wl.o had since proved himself so fantastic, and so unstable, and 60 cold ; but as the child did not talk of him nor complain, nor seem to miss him, she concluded that this alarm had been but a fancy of her own. She did not slop to ask herself if she had talked or complained when the joy had been laken away out of her own bygone youth. It was well, thought Miss Martha, that there had been no promise to Elizabeth about giving her girl as a wife to the miser's heir. Tobereevil should never blight her as it blighted her old aunt. She would pray that her niece might be ble^std with a better lot than that of a heart-broken wife, or a saddened old maid.

Miss Martha had never complained of her lot as an old maid ; but she plainly avowed to herself now, when hhe waa on the subject, that the life of a woman, such as herself, was apt to be sadder than many others. There is a trick of looking back which Bhe finds it difficult to unlearn; and her glances over her shoulder buit her mor« sharply than do other people s. A man incliued for retrospect will perhaps see efforts before success, which he would not be willing to cancel even to bring back his youth ; a wife knows nothing better worth h«-r mature contemplation than the early years of love she had toiled through with her husband : a mother will see her children grow so tall that between their smllling faces the landscape of the past shines but in very faint gleams, she being no longer laige enough to see visions over their heads, but for the single wooian, said Miss Martha, wbo ought to have been a wife, there is nothing tall enough nor broad enough, to Bhut out that one bleak point, just fringed by the remnant of the roses of youth, where the first step was taken upon her lonely road. So the good old lady was very thankful, Beeing that May's heart waa quite untouched.