loneliness which came upon her, when the musical bells of his team
tinkled into silence beyond the hill, there lurked a strange sense of
relief, as if her nature would more readily adjust itself during his
absence.

Instead of accepting the day with its duties, as a sufficient burden,
she now deliberately reviewed the Past. It would give her pain, she
knew; but what pain could she ever feel again, comparable to that which
she had so recently suffered? Long she brooded over that bitter period
before and immediately succeeding her son's birth, often declaring to
herself how fatally she had erred, and as often shaking her head in
hopeless renunciation of any present escape from the consequences of
that error. She saw her position clearly, yet it seemed that she had so
entangled herself in the meshes of a merciless Fate, that the only
reparation she could claim, either for herself or her son, would be
thrown away by forestalling--after such endless, endless submission and
suffering--the Event which should set her free.

Then she recalled and understood, as never before, Gilbert's childhood
and boyhood. For his sake she had accepted menial service in families
where he was looked upon and treated as an incumbrance. The child, it
had been her comfort to think, was too young to know or feel this,--but
now, alas! the remembrance of his shyness and sadness told her a
different tale. So nine years had passed, and she was then forced to
part with her boy. She had bound him to Farmer Fairthorn, whose good
heart, and his wife's, she well knew, and now she worked for him, alone,
putting by her savings every year, and stinting herself to the utmost
that she might be able to start him in life, if he should live to be his
own master. Little by little, the blot upon her seemed to fade out or be
forgotten, and she hoped--oh, how she had hoped!--that he might be