"If you like, mama."

She turned to her mother as she answered.

The light of the clearing sky, at once soft and penetrating, fell
full on her. Mrs. Eyrecourt, looking at her as usual, suddenly became
serious: she studied her daughter's face with an eager and attentive
scrutiny.

"Do you see any extraordinary change in me?" Stella asked, with a faint
smile.

Instead of answering, Mrs. Eyrecourt put her arm round Stella with a
loving gentleness, entirely at variance with any ordinary expression
of her character. The worldly mother's eyes rested with a lingering
tenderness on the daughter's face. "Stella!" she said softly--and
stopped, at a loss for words for the first time in her life.

After a while, she began again. "Yes; I see a change in you," she
whispered--"an interesting change which tells me something. Can you
guess what it is?"

Stella's color rose brightly, and faded again.

She laid her head in silence on her mother's bosom. Worldly, frivolous,
self-interested, Mrs. Eyrecourt's nature was the nature of a woman--and
the one great trial and triumph of a woman's life, appealing to her as a
trial and a triumph soon to come to her own child, touched fibers under
the hardened surface of her heart which were still unprofaned. "My poor