ours. I
believe it is against your nature; and I know it is against your
principles. Do not say `our minds.'"

"I say it because it is true. I never see you look grave but my heart
is as heavy--. But never mind that. What is the matter, love?"

"Nothing," sighed Hester. "Nothing that any one can help--. People may
say what they will, Edward: but there can be no escape from living alone
in this world, after all."

"What _do_ you mean?"

"I mean what no one, not even you, can gainsay. I mean that `the heart
knoweth its own bitterness;' that we have disappointments, and
anxieties, and remorse, and many, many kinds of trouble that we can
never tell to any human being--that none have any concern with--that we
should never dare to tell. We must be alone in the world, after all."

"Where is your faith, while you feel so?" asked Edward, smiling. "Do
you really think that confidence proceeds only while people believe each
other perfect,--while they have not anxieties, and disappointments, and
remorse? Do you not feel that our faults, or rather our failures, bind
us together?"

"Our faults bind us together!" exclaimed Hester. "Oh how happy I should
be, if I could think that!"

"We cannot but think it. We shall find it so, love, every day. When
our faith fails, when we are discouraged, instead of fighting the battle
with our faithlessness alone, we shall come to one another for courage,
for stimulus, for help to see the bright, the true side of everything."

"That supposes that we can do so," said Hester, sadly. "But I cannot.
I have all my life intended to repose entire confidence, and I have
never done it yet."

"Yes: you have in me. You cannot help it. You think that you cannot,
only because you mean more by reposing confidence than others do. Your
spirit is too noble, too ingenuous, too humble for concealment. You
cannot help yourself, Hester: you have fully confided in me, and you
will go on to do so."

Hester shook her head mournfully. "I have done it hitherto with you,
and with you only," said she: "and the mason has been--you know the
reason--the same which made me own all to you, that first evening in the
shrubbery. Ah! I see you think that this is a lasting security; that,
as you will never change, I never shall: but you do not understand me
wholly yet. There is something that you do not know,--that I cannot
make you believe: but you will find it true, when it is too late. No
good inf