“To her, no; that was not my fear.”

There was Alured, almost exactly what Trevor had been when last she saw him, with his bright sweet honest face over the rose, running up the stairs, knocking, and coming in with his boyish, “Good morning, Hester, I do hope you are better;” and bending down with his fresh brotherly kiss on her poor hot forehead, “I’ve got this rose for you, the bud will be out in a day or two.”

If ever there was a modern version of St. Dorothy’s roses it was there.

That boy’s kiss and his gift touched the place in her heart.  She caught him passionately in her arms, and held him till he almost lost breath, and then she held him off from her as vehemently.

“Boy—­Trevorsham—­what do you come to me for?”

“He told me,” said Alured, half dismayed.  “Besides, you are my sister.”

“Sister, indeed!  Don’t you know we would have killed you ?”

“Never mind that,” said Alured, with an odd sort of readiness.  “You are my sister all the same, and oh—­if you would let me try to be a little bit of Trevor to you, though I know I can’t—­”

“You—­who must hate me?”

“No,” said he, “I always did like you, Hester; and I’ve been thinking about you all the half—­whenever I thought of him.”

And as the tears came into the boy’s eyes, the blessed weeping came at last to Hester.

He thought he had done her harm, for she cried till she was absolutely spent, sick, faint and weak as a child.

But she was like a child, and when her head was on the pillow she begged for Trevorsham to wish her good-night.  I think she tried to fancy his kiss was Trevor’s.

Any way the bitter black despair was gone from that time.  She believed in and accepted his kindness like a sort of after glow from Trevor’s love.  Perhaps it did her the more good that after all he was only a boy, sometimes forgot her, and sometimes hurried after his own concerns, so that there was more excitement in it than if it had been the steady certain tenderness of an older person on which she could reckon.

She certainly cared for no one like Trevorsham.  She even came downstairs that she might see him more constantly, and while he was at home, she seemed to think of no one else.  But she had softened to us all, and accepted us as her belongings, in a matter-of-course kind of way.  Only when he was gone did she one day say in a heavy dreary tone, that she must soon be leaving us.

But I told her, as we had agreed, that she was very far from well enough to go away alone; for indeed, it was true that disease of the lungs had set in, and to send her away to languish and die alone was not to be thought of.

My answer made her look up to me, and say, “I don’t see why you should all be so good to me!  Do you know how I have hated you?”

I could not help smiling a little at that, it had so little to do with the matter; but I bent down and kissed her, the first time I had ever done so.