For this she yielded the pleasures of town; for this she immured herself at Raynham; for this she bore with a thousand follies, exactions, inconveniences, things abhorrent to her, and heaven knows what forms of torture and self-denial, which are smilingly endured by that greatest of voluntary martyrs--a mother with a daughter to marry.

Mrs.Doria, an amiable widow, had surely married but for her daughter Clare.

The lady's hair no woman could possess without feeling it her pride.

It was the daily theme of her lady's-maid,--a natural aureole to her head.

She was gay, witty, still physically youthful enough to claim a destiny; and she sacrificed it to accomplish her daughter's! sacrificed, as with heroic scissors, hair, wit, gaiety--let us not attempt to enumerate how much! more than may be said.