ou have
done; but you see I have to break up, now poor Grant is gone; we
cannot live as we did before, even with what you do; and--for a
little while--it is cheaper there; and by and by we can come back
and make some other plan. Besides, I feel sometimes as if I _must_
go off; as if there weren't anything left here for me."

Poor woman! poor _girl_, still,--whose life had never truly taken
root!

"I suppose," said Uncle Titus, soberly, "that God shines all round.
He's on this side as much as He is on that."

Mrs. Ledwith looked up out of her handkerchief, with which at that
moment she had covered her eyes.

"I never knew Uncle Titus was pious!" she said to herself. And her
astonishment dried her tears.

He said nothing more that was pious, however; he simply assured her,
then and in conversations afterward, that he should take nothing
"hard;" he never expected to bind her, or put her on parole; he
chose to come to know his relatives, and he had done so; he had also
done what seemed to him right, in return for their meeting him half
way; they were welcome to it all, to take it and use it as they best
could, and as circumstances and their own judgment dictated. If they
went abroad, he should advise them to do it before the winter.

These words implied consent, approval. Mrs. Ledwith went up-stairs
after them with a heart so much lightened that she was very nearly
cheerful. There would be a good deal to do now, and something to
look forward to; the old pulses of activity were quickened. She
could live with those faculties that had been always vital in her,
as people breathe with one live lung; but trouble and change had
wrought in her no deeper or further capacity; had wakened nothing
that had never been awake before.

The house and furniture were to be sold; they would sail in
September.

When Desire perceived that it was settled, she gave way; she had
said little before; her mother had had many plans, and they amused
her; she would not worry her with opposition; and besides, she was
herself in a secret dream of a hope half understood.

It happened that she told it to Kenneth Kincaid herself; she saw
almost every one who came, instead of her mother; Mrs. Ledwith lived
in her own room chiefly. This was the way in which it had come
about, that nobody noticed or guessed how it was with Desire, and
what aspect Kenneth's friendship and kindness, in the simple history
of those few weeks, might dangerously grow to b