soul, while she
stood for a minute with bonnet and shawl still on, looking out from her
little window, dreamily, over the dazzle of the snow, even as her
half-blinded thought peered out from its own narrowness into the
infinite splendor of the promise of God--"I wonder if God will ever make
me beautiful! I wonder if I shall ever have a real, great joyfulness,
that isn't a make believe!"

Glory called her fancies so. They followed her still. She lived yet in
an ideal world. The real world--that is, the best good of it--had not
come close enough to her, even in this, her widely amended condition, to
displace the other. Remember--this child of eighteen had missed her
childhood; had known neither father nor mother, sister nor brother.

Don't think her simple, in the pitiful meaning of the word; but she
still enacted, in the midst of her plain, daily life, wonderful dreams
that nobody could have ever suspected; and here, in her solitary
chamber, called up at will creatures of imagination who were to her what
human creatures, alas! had never been. Above all, she had a sister here,
to whom she told all her secrets. This sister's name was Leonora.

CHAPTER XVII.

FROST-WONDERS.

"No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm, the mystic fabric sprung.
Majestic silence!"
HEBER.

The thaw continued till the snow was nearly gone. Only the great drifts
against the fences, and the white folds in the rifts of distant
hillsides lingered to tell what had been. Then came a day of warm rain,
that washed away the last fragment of earth's cast-off vesture, and
bathed her pure for the new adornment that was to be laid upon her. At
night, the weather cooled, and the rain changed to a fine, slow mist,
congealing as it fell.

Faith stood next morning by a small round table in the sitting-room
window, and leaned lovingly over her jonquils and hyacinths that were
coming into bloom. Then, drawing the curtain cord to let in the first
sunbeam that should slant from the south upon her bulbs, she gave a
little cry of rapturous astonishment. It was a diamond morning!

Away off, up the lane, and over the meadows, every tree and bush was
hung with twinkling gems that the slight wind swayed against each other
with tiny crashes of faint music, and the sun was just touching with a
level splendor.

After that first, quick cry, Faith stood mute with ecstasy.

"Mother!" said she,