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 regularly, that he never spoke a disrespectful word to her, but all this had little weight. Jane Bennett took her blessings for granted. Her mind dwelt by preference upon her small vexations.

Yet if she had her faults, and no onecould deny them, the poor woman endured her full measure of punishment. Faults of disposition are not as grave as many of those to which human nature is heir, but they bring their own retribution. And while Jane Bennett alienated her son's affection by a course of steady opposition, of daily bickering, yet there was nothing which she craved as she did that very filial love which got no chance to blossom.

Perhaps she was in reality more sinned against than sinning. Certainly, when Anson, twenty-five years previous, had refrained from telling her the true story of the disaster which had fallen upon him, he had done heracruel injustice. The fact, too, that her husband had had no impulse to take her into his confidence showed that he also misjudged her. In spite of her narrow-mindedness, her self-conceit, her ill-temper, Jane Bennett had very strict ideas of right and wrong. If she once had been convinced that Anson had committed a wrong, even at her own instigation, she would have been eager to see the wrong atoned for. As it was, she lived in a tangle of vexations, to which she had no clue. How could she know that her son's life was one long expiation? How could she divine that he wore his shabby old