Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/326

324 enough. Mrs. Courtenaye was not at her son's second marriage; unyielding, yet generous, she was one of those spirits to whom self-sacrifice is a relief. The faith of solitude and penance suited her mind; and she had entered one of those convents which, quiet and secluded, existed yet in England. In her eyes the sacrifice was atonement, and an offering for others. Sincere and enthusiastic in her belief, the prayers that, for years, she offered for her son's happiness, made her own. Both Mrs. Churchill and Lord Norbourne lived to an extreme old age; the last, with a happiness around his latter days, that had never belonged to his earlier years. The loss of his youngest and most beloved child had been to him the bitterest feeling of his life; but it had worked in him for good. Sorrow had subdued, and affection had softened, his nature; his sweet child had been his good angel. Her latest prayer was fulfilled even in this world; and her father found, beside the hearth of her husband, the interest and the solace of his old age.