“Oh, Mr. Monteith!  What a lovely span of greys, they match perfectly.”  Then with a pretty pout:  “Naughty man, you never asked me to try them.”

“Suppose I ask you now,” he said, and even while he spoke he said to himself, “Edna Winters would never have done that.”

Miss Percival needed no urging; she was soon seated in triumph by Mr. Monteith’s side, the envy of many another city belle.

That night Edna stood at the window of her little chamber, looking out on the fair earth glittering like diamonds in the moonlight.  She was not often in the mood she found herself in tonight:  restless, gloomy, with no heart for anything.  She began to take herself to task for it.  Why had the light suddenly gone out of everything and life to seem flat and dull?  She knew why.  It was simply because she had seen that bewitching-looking girl riding with Mr. Monteith.  And what of that?  Was she foolish enough to believe that he cared for her, a simple country girl, just because he had given her a few flowers and called there.  He probably considered these common attentions that he offered to many others.  Her cheeks burned at the remembrance of the delight she had felt in his society.  The last few weeks had been the happiest she had ever known.  No words of his would justify her, either.  She was vexed at herself.  Here it had turned out that she was just like any other silly girl, holding her heart in her hand, ready to bestow it unasked.  In her self-accusing spirit, she forgot that looks and tones may speak volumes in the absence of words.

“Now, Edna Winters,” she told herself, as she stared out on the white hills, “you might as well look things in the face to-night and have it done with.  I shall probably spend a great part of my life on this very hill, living on in just the way I did before I knew him.  Why not?  That is the way Samantha Moore and Jane Williams have been doing these ever so many years.  They keep right on, and on, and on.  Nothing happens to them.  There is no change in their lives.  Why should there be in mine?  They clean house spring and fall, can fruit, go to town, have the sewing society, and so on”—­and Edna shuddered a little at the picture she had sketched of her own future.  These two were neighbours, whose peaceful dwellings nestled among the hills before her.  Then she felt condemned as she heard floating up from the sitting-room, the “wild, warbling strains” of Dundee, her dear old father’s voice, with just a little tremble in the tones.  “How thankful she ought to be for this blessed home of hers.”  The stove-pipe came up from below and warmed her room.  She came over to it, and inclined her head to hear the words: 

“Oh, God, our help in ages past
Our strength in years to come,
Our refuge from the stormy blast,
And our eternal borne.”

Sure enough!  God our “strength in years to come,” even though they be wearisome years.  A little “stormy blast” had swept over her.  She would fly to her Refuge, and then the “eternal home.”  What if this life was not just as we would have it, the next one will be; and Edna “laid her down in peace and slept.”