My Mother's Rival / Everyday Life Library No. 4

ho expiate their crime on the scaffold. Are they taken away and brought up somewhere in ignorance o

becomes of them can any one living say? Who meets them in after life? Has any young man ever been pointed out

e lad, who was as unconscious of all that happened as a little babe. I have often wondered what became of him. Does he hear his father's name? Do those with whom he lives know him for a murderer's son? If he goes wooing any fa

hemselves under false names in silent places, dreading lest the world should

rld one of the most commonplace people in it, and yet I have lived, from the time I

ies and painful histories before me, but no one ever guessed that I have known perhap

e world with so dark a secret locked in their hearts,

ll me if you think there have been man

of those beautiful, picturesque, haunted houses that one sees in Christmas annuals, with Christmas lights shining from the great windows. I am sorry to say that I know very little of architecture. I could not describe Tayne Abbey; it was a dark, picturesque, massive building; the tall towers w

Montfords did not prosper; after some generations the abbey fell into ruins, and then they sold the abbey to the Taynes, who had long wished for it on account of the similarity of names. Our ancestors built the present mansion called Tayne Abbey; each succeeding Tayne had done something to beautify it-one had built the magnificent picture gallery, and had made a magnificent collection of pictures, so magnificent, indeed, as to rob the Taynes for many years afterward of some part of their revenue. There they stood still, a fortune in themselves. Another Tayne had devoted himself to collecting gold and silver plate; in no other house in England was there such a collection of valuable plate as in ours. A third Tayne had thought of nothing but his gardens, devot

ich came the sweetest perfume; of fine trailing laces, fine as the intricate work of a spider's web; of white hands, always warm and soft, and covered with sparkly rings; of a sweet, low voice, that was like the cooing of a d

e same golden hair and deep-blue eyes; the same shaped face and hands. I remember that my mother-that sweet young

would say to me, "let us get awa

heard the servants speak of me, and say what a great heiress I would be in the yea

er. Sometimes her toilet would be finished before the dinner-bell rang, then she would come to the nursery and ask for me. We walked up and down the long picture gallery, where the dead, and gone L

those happy hours-my intense pride in and devoted love for my mother

it is just like coming to heaven w

some day," she said, laughingly

like her. They said she was like an angel in the house; so young, so fair, so sweet-so young, yet, in her wise, sweet way, a mother and friend

a sick mother, then money and wine would be dispatched. I have heard since that even if their love affairs

means unwise or indiscriminate in her charities. When the people had employment she gave nothing but kind words; where they were industrious, and could not get wo

known. Great ladies came from London sometimes, looking world-worn and weary, long

uarreled, it was to my mother they appealed-if a child seemed

loved her so passionately when every one e