Stella’s highest spirits seemed to return when she found herself driving rapidly along the road to the farm in the conveyance which Bessie and her eldest brother—­whom Lucy would scarcely have recognised—­had brought to meet them.  Bessie was not much changed.  Her good-humoured face had more sweetness and earnestness of expression than it had once worn, and her manner at home had the considerate, half-maternal air of an eldest daughter.  Mrs. Ford, too, was less bustling, with a quiet repose about her hospitable kindliness that gave a feeling of rest and comfort, and was the result of being less “cumbered about much serving,” and more disposed to let her heart dwell on the “better part,” on which she now set a truer value.  A more perceptible regard for it, indeed, pervaded, the whole family, and Bessie and her brother were, both of them, Sunday-school teachers now.

Mrs. Ford and Bessie were much shocked at the change in Stella, whose blooming appearance they well remembered.  Lucy, had become so accustomed to her cousin’s altered looks, that she thought her looking rather better than usual, under the influence of the change and excitement.  But Mrs. Ford shook her head mournfully over her in private.  “She looks to me in a decline,” she said to her husband.  “I’m afraid she hasn’t many years before her in this world!”

But another change besides the external one had come over her, so gradually that Lucy had not observed it till now, when the place brought back so vividly the recollection of the gay, flippant Stella of old.  She had certainly grown more thoughtful, more quiet, even more serious; and Lucy observed that her former levity had quite departed, and that a flippant remark never now fell from her lips.  Her old wilfulness of manner continued to characterize her, but it was owing chiefly to the caprice of disease.  She was shy of joining in religious conversation, but seemed to listen with great interest whenever Lucy and Bessie spoke to each other of things connected with the “life hidden with Christ in God.”  At such times she would look as if she were trying to gain a clue to a mystery which puzzled, and yet intensely interested her.

It was with mingled pleasure and sadness that Lucy once more took her seat in her father’s church, and listened to the voice of another from his old pulpit.  His successor, Mr. Edwards, though a man of a different stamp, resembled him a good deal in the earnestness of his spirit and the simplicity of his gospel preaching.  The message was the same, though the mode of delivering it was slightly different.  He received with kindness and courtesy the daughter of his predecessor, and invited her during her stay to take a share in the teaching of the Sunday school,—­an invitation which she willingly accepted, and had the pleasure of finding in her new class a few of her old scholars.