"What papers? Do tell me, can any thing be worse than this concealment—you have always told me everything."
"Ah, if I had," said Mrs. Lesly, with a sigh.
"But do tell me now, I would rather hear any thing than see you suffer."
"Can you really bear it?" enquired her mother, seeming to shake off the oppressive calmness with which she had been speaking before, and looking attentively at her daughter, whose warm feelings were almost ready to burst control.
"I will bear any thing," answered Mabel, walking to her, and kneeling by her side, "any thing you can tell me."
"Then you shall hear me now, lest you have cause to curse your mother's memory, if you heard it when I was gone from you. Your poor father put by a thousand pounds, which I never told you of before. It would have been but a poor pittance—yet it would have saved you from want; but this is nearly all gone now, for my sister has been borrowing of me from time to time, promising to be a mother to my children—I have lent her six hundred of the thousand, and I have lost her promises to repay them back. Should any thing happen to either of us, what will you do?"
"Trust to me, mother, dear. He who has supported me through far worse trials will support me still."
"Reproach me now, Mabel," said Mrs. Lesly, sorrowfully, "but do not live to curse me in the bitterness of your heart."
"No, my loved mother," said her daughter, looking up in her face with unmistakeable cheerfulness, "think no more of this now. Amy shall not suffer while health is left me, and power to use the education my dear father gave me; and I am so happy to think nothing worse is to be feared, even should any thing so strange occur as that aunt Villars could not pay us. And do you think I could once forget that it was because you were kind, unselfish and generous, that you lent the money."
Mrs. Lesly lent down and folded her child in her arms, saying, in a low repentant voice—