But the greater confidence of maturer years, the example of her husband, the emotions of a wife and mother, had enlarged her heart, and caused her, by ready sympathy with others, to increase her own enjoyments, and render herself more pleasing than perhaps, if she had remained single, she ever would have been.

It was this invisible charm that caused her to be admired and involuntarily loved, even by those who, considering her a saint at first, shrunk in dread from her society, and it was this that rendered the frequent trials of her niece less difficult to bear.
"Does my Ellen remember a little conversation we had on the eve of her last birthday ?" demanded Mrs.Hamilton of her niece one evening, as she had finished dressing, to attend her daughter to the Opera, and Martyn, at her desire, had obeyed Caroline's impatient summons, and left to Ellen the task of fastening her lady's jewels.
Whenever nothing occurred to prevent it, Ellen was generally with her aunt at dressing-time, and the little conversation that passed between them at such periods frequently rendered Ellen's solitary evening cheerful, when otherwise it might have been, from her state of health and apparently endless task, even gloomy.

Mrs.Hamilton had observed a more than usual depression that evening in the manners of her niece, and, without noticing, she endeavoured to remove it.

Ellen was bending down to clasp a bracelet as she spoke, and surprised at the question, looked up, without giving herself time to conceal an involuntary tear, though she endeavoured to remove any such impression, by smiling cheerfully as she replied in the affirmative.
"And will it cheer your solitary evenings, then, my dear Ellen ?" she continued, drawing her niece to her, and kissing her transparent brow, "if I say that, in the self-denial, patience, and submission you are now practising, you are doing more, towards raising your character in my estimation, and banishing from remembrance the painful past, than you once fancied it would ever be in your power to do.

I think I know its motive, and therefore I do not hesitate to bestow the meed of praise you so well deserve." For a minute Ellen replied not, she only raised her aunt's hand to her lips and kissed it, as if to hide her emotion before she spoke, but her eyes were still swelling with tears as she looked up and replied--"Indeed, my dearest aunt, I do not deserve it.