`Mother, mother, I reproach you with nothing. Why will you always dwell on this?'

`Isn't it natural that I should dwell on this, when I am all affection and sensitiveness, and am wounded in the cruelest way, whenever you look at me?'

`I do not mean to wound you, mother. Have you no remembrance of what has been said between us? Let the Past rest.'

`Yes, rest! And let gratitude to me rest; and let affection for me rest; and let me rest in my out-of-the- way room, with no society and no attention, while you find new relations to make much of, who have no earthly claim upon you! Good gracious, Edith, do you know what an elegant establishment you are at the head of?'

`Yes, Hush!'

`And that gentlemanly creature, Dombey? Do you know that you are married to him, Edith, and that you have a settlement, and a position, and a carriage, and I don't know what?'

`Indeed, I know it, mother; well.'

??? `As you would have had with that delightful good soul--what did they call him?--Granger--if he hadn't died. And who have you to thank for all this, Edith?'

`You, mother; you.'

`Then put your arms round my neck, and kiss me; and show me, Edith, that you know there never was a better mama than I have been to you. And don't let me become a perfect fright with teasing and wearing myself at your ingratitude, or when I'm out again in society no soul will know me, not even that hateful animal, the Major.'

But, sometimes, when Edith went nearer to her, and bending down her stately head, put her cold cheek to hers, the mother would draw back as if she were afraid of her, and would fall into a fit of trembling, and cry out that there was a wandering in her wits. And sometimes she would entreat her, with humility, to sit down on the chair beside her bed, and would look at her (as she sat there brooding) with a face that even the rosecoloured curtains could not make otherwise than seared and wild.

The rose-coloured curtains blushed, in course of time, on Cleopatra's bodily recovery, and on her dress-- more juvenile than ever to repair the ravages of illness--and on the rouge, and on the teeth, and on the curls, and on the diamonds, and the short sleeves, and the whole wardrobe of the doll that had tumbled down before the mirror. They blushed, too, now and then, upon an indistinctness in her speech which she turned off with a girlish giggle, and on an occasional failing in her memory, that had no rule in it, but came and went fantastically, as if in mockery of her fantastic self.

But they never blushed upon a change in the new manner of her thought and speech towards her daughter. And though that daughter often came within their influence, they never blushed upon her loveliness irradiated by a smile, or softened by the light of filial love, in its stern beauty.