“Dame Hannah has a melancholy story to tell you, for which I crave your sympathy.  Will you be so good as to allow her to speak?”

Paulina seemed to feel that she was the hostess to her brethren.  She looked ill and suffering; a line of pain had settled about her lips, and there were always dark shades under her eyes; still, there was something firm and decisive in her voice, and her glance was anything rather than soft and winning.  After her commanding tones Hannah’s tale sounded as soft as a song.  She described the different natures of the two sisters as lovingly as though they were her own daughters, each in her own way seemed to her so worthy of compassion, and she spoke with pathetic lament of the unprotected, helpless orphans abandoned to misery, and among them a pretty little blind boy.  And she ended her speech by saying: 

“The steward’s second daughter—­she is sixteen and so beautiful that she must be exposed to every temptation—­has now the whole charge of the nourishment and care of her six young brothers and sisters.  Ought we to withhold from them a protecting hand?  No, so surely as we love the Saviour we ought not.  You agree with me?  Well then, do not let us delay our help.  The second daughter of the deceased Keraunus is here, in this house; to-morrow early the children must all quit the palace, and now, while I am speaking, are at home alone and but ill tended.”

The Christian woman’s good words fell on kindly soil, and the presbyters and deacons determined to recommend the congregation who should assemble at the love-feast to give their assistance to the steward’s children.

The elders had still much to discuss, so Hannah and Paulina were charged with the task of appealing to the hearts of the well-to-do members of the congregation to provide for the orphans.  The poor widow first conducted her wealthy friend and hostess to the little room where Arsinoe was waiting with growing impatience.  She looked paler than usual but, in spite of her tear-reddened eyes which she kept fixed on the ground, she was so lovely, so touchingly lovely, that the mere sight of her moved Paulina’s heart.  She had once had two children, an only daughter besides her son.  The girl bad died in the spring-time of her maidenhood, and Paulina thought of her at every hour of her life.  It was for her sake that she had been baptized and devoted her existence to a series of painful sacrifices.  She strove with all her might to be a good Christian—­for surely she, the self-denying woman who had taken up the cross of her own free will, the suffering creature who loved stillness and who had made her country-house, which she visited daily, a scene of unrest, could not fail to win Heaven, and there she hoped to meet her innocent child.

Arsinoe reminded her of her Helena, who certainly had been far less fair than the steward’s lovely daughter, but whose image had assumed new and glorified forms in the mother’s faithful heart.  Since her son had left home for a foreign country she had often asked herself whether she might not find some young creature to take into her home, to attach to herself, to bring up as a Christian, and to bring as an offering to her Saviour’s feet.