The glass door leading into the flower-garden stood open, and Mr. Lindsay who had been watching her from the cover of the clustering honeysuckle, stepped back into the room.

With a cry of delight, she held out her arms.

“Dear Mr. Lindsay, I shall thank you, and pray for you, and love you as long as I live!”

He put a small packet in her hand, and whispered: 

“Here is something I wish you to keep until you are eighteen.  Do not open it before that time, unless I give you permission, or unless you know that I am dead.”

He drew her tenderly to his heart, and his lips pressed her cheek.  Then he said brokenly: 

“O God! be merciful in all things, to my darling!”

A moment after she heard his rapid footsteps on the gravelled walk, followed by the clang of the gate; then a great loneliness as of death fell upon her.

There are indeed sorrows “that bruise the heart like hammers,” and age it suddenly, prematurely.  In subsequent years Regina looked back to the incidents of this eventful Sabbath, and marked it with a black stone in the calendar of memory as the day on which she “put away childish things,” and began to see life and the world through new, strange disenchanting lenses, that dispelled all the gilding glamour of childhood, and unexpectedly let in a grey dull light that chilled and awed her.

With tearless but indescribably mournful eyes, she looked vacantly at the door through which her friend had vanished, as it then seemed, for ever, and, finding that her own remarks were entirely unheard, unheeded, Hannah touched her shoulder.

“Poor thing!  Are you ready to let me carry you upstairs?”

“Thank you, but I am not going upstairs to-night.  I want to stay here, because I am too heavy to be carried up and down, and I can get about better from here.  Bring a pillow and some bedclothes.  I can sleep on this lounge.”

“I shall be scolded if you don’t go to bed.”

“Let me alone, Hannah.  I intend to stay where I am.  Bring the things I need.  Nobody shall scold you if you will only do as I ask.”

“Then I shall have to make a pallet on the floor, for Miss Elise gave positive orders that I should sleep in your room until she came back.  Don’t you mean to undress yourself?”

“No.  Please unfasten my clothes and then leave them as they are.  You must not sleep on the floor.  Roll in the hall sofa, and it will make a nice bed.”

There was no alternative, and when Mr. Hargrove returned at midnight, he deemed it useless to reprimand or expostulate, as Regina declared herself very comfortable, and pleaded for permission to remain until morning.

Looking very sad and careworn, the pastor stood for some minutes leaning on his gold-headed cane.  As he bade her goodnight and turned from the lounge, she put her hand on the cane.

“Please, sir, lend me this until morning.  Hannah sleeps soundly, and if I am forced to wake her, I can easily do so by tapping on the floor with your cane.”