“Your are in some ways, darling.  Your mother’s prayers for her children have been answered.  Those God has already taken are safe; and you are one of His little ones whose angel one day shall behold His face in joy.”

“I am glad my mother prayed for us; God is so sure to answer a mother’s prayers.  I suppose it is because they are really in earnest.  But did she ask anything special?”

“That you might be kept pure from the world’s pollution, and get what was really for your good.  Her letters to Mrs. Winthrop were full of this:  They are all preserved among Mr. Winthrop’s papers, and some day he will give them to you.”

“She was a Christian, I think, like Mr. Bowen,—­one who really had a hold on God.”

“I never knew one so unspotted from the world.  I too shall call her mother if I meet her in the Heavenly places; for it was she brought me to Jesus.”

“Mrs. Flaxman, is it easy to come to Him,—­to be His disciple?”

“So easy, the way-faring man, though a fool, need not find it too difficult.”

“I believe Christ has said to me as He did to the Magdalene:  ’Daughter, thy sins, which are many are all forgiven thee.’  Is it not grand to be His child?  There is nothing in the world I want so much as to do His will.”

“You stepped out of your way, Medoline, to help others, and they have done more in return than you gave,” she said, the tears filling her eyes.

“I might not have found Christ for years, but for Mr. Bowen—­perhaps never,” I added with a shudder.

The dinner bell ended our little fellowship meeting by the firelight.  Mr. Winthrop came and we took our places at the table, the dinner going on in the same precise fashion as if there were no such thing as glad, or breaking hearts.  There was very little conversation; and dinner ended, Mrs. Flaxman and I were left alone directly.  I longed to ask what it was Mr. Winthrop decided I must not know; and the mere fact of his so wishing deterred me from asking.  But I felt convinced it was in some way connected with Hermione Le Grande.  Neither could I confess to Mrs. Flaxman that I had only an hour or two before heard from her own lips the terrible wrong she had done him, or her plainly expressed determination to win him back once more.

Usually an excellent sleeper, I lay that night finding sleep impossible, and counting the quarter hours as the great hall clock rang them out in the still space.  I made the discovery, too, in the solemn hush of the night, when thought grows most active and intense, that notwithstanding his coldness and positive cynicism, I cherished for my guardian in the short time I had been with him an affection stronger than I had ever felt for any one since I had lost my two intensely-beloved parents—­a loss that had embittered the otherwise happy period of girlhood.  I had never realized until that night how much he was to me.  Pity, perhaps, for the bitter pain that had so changed