“Thus you see something of how the years passed on.  I, a helpless, ill-used orphan, growing older and and stronger day by day, and yet morally weaker and weaker, with no will or power of resistance, till I wonder sometimes that I am not an imbecile indeed.

“I thank the great God for my school-days.  They have been days of pleasure and benefit to me.  They have taken me from that home where I withered as the dew withers before the glaring sun, and cast me among pleasant friends, who seem to love me, and at least are true and kind.  True and kind!  Dear Lizzie, you cannot comprehend the significance of that expression.  To my starved, wretched heart, these words are the fulness of all speech.  I comprehend their meaning, and regard them as I do the burning stars afar, shining dimly upon a darkened world.

“Yes; again I say, I thank the great God for these school-days, that led me to know you, Lizzie—­you, to whom my heart has learned to turn as a wounded, helpless bird would turn to its mother’s sheltering wing for safety and protection.”

Touched by Leah’s story, and her protestations of love, Lizzie bowed her head in her hands, and a few tears fell through the slender fingers.  Observing these tears, Leah bent forward and kissed them away, saying, “These are the first tears I ever saw fall for me.”  Then she continued: 

“It is not necessary to dwell on the innumerable instances of cruelty and wrong that have marked my life, from the period just mentioned, on to the present.  It is enough to say that many events in my home-life have left their searing impress on my heart and brain; and many, I thank God, have faded from my memory.  But when I was fifteen, about the time you and I entered this seminary, an event took place, that has deeply wounded my heart, and will leave it sore forever.  It was this: 

“Very early on the morning of my fifteenth birthday, my father came to my chamber and congratulated me with many kisses, giving me his blessing.  Then he said: 

“’My daughter, I have here the miniature of your mother, taken before your birth.  I had it set in diamonds then, for you, my child, little dreaming she would so soon be taken from us both.  I have kept it securely locked away, waiting till you were old enough properly to appreciate its value.  Now to-day, on your fifteenth birth-day, I have called forth the treasure, and give it to you forever.  Take it; keep it carefully, my child, for the sake of the living as well as the dead.’  My father laid the miniature in my hand, and turned away with ill-disguised emotion.  Softly, and with trembling hand, I opened the casket that contained the treasure, and for the first time since her death, my eyes rested upon the dimly remembered features of my angel mother.

“O Lizzie Heartwell!  At the first glimpse of that sweet, but half-forgotten face, I fell, like a helpless thing that I was, to the floor, prostrate with emotion.  How long I remained thus overcome by sorrow and weeping, I know not.  I knew nothing till the old familiar voice, harsh, cold, and cruel, fell upon my ear as the door opened.