stantly appeared new vials, big and little, as the
physician, made his daily visit, and prescribed now this drug and now
that, for a wound that had struck through the soul.

Mary remained many days at the white house, because, to the invalid, no
step, no voice, no hand was like hers. We see her there now, as she sits
in the glimmering by the bed-curtains,--her head a little drooped, as
droops a snowdrop over a grave;--one ray of light from a round hole in
the closed shutters falls on her smooth-parted hair, her small hands are
clasped on her knees, her mouth has lines of sad compression, and in her
eyes are infinite questionings.

CHAPTER XXIV.

When Mrs. Marvyn began to amend, Mary returned to the home cottage, and
resumed the details of her industrious and quiet life.

Between her and her two best friends had fallen a curtain of silence.
The subject that filled all her thoughts could not be named between
them. The Doctor often looked at her pale cheeks and drooping form with
a face of honest sorrow, and heaved deep sighs as she passed; but he did
not find any power within himself by which he could approach her. When
he would speak, and she turned her sad, patient eyes so gently on him,
the words went back again to his heart, and there, taking a second
thought, spread upward wing in prayer.

Mrs. Scudder sometimes came to her room after she was gone to bed, and
found her weeping; and when gently she urged her to sleep, she would
wipe her eyes so patiently and turn her head with such obedient
sweetness, that her mother's heart utterly failed her. For hours Mary
sat in her room with James's last letter spread out before her. How
anxiously had she studied every word and phrase in it, weighing them to
see if the hope of eternal life were in them! How she dwelt on those
last promises! Had he kept them? Ah! to die without one word more! Would
no angel tell her?--would not the loving God, who knew all, just whisper
one word? He must have read the little Bible! What had he thought? What
did he feel in that awful hour when he felt himself drifting on to that
fearful eternity? Perhaps he had been regenerated,--perhaps there had
been a sudden change;--who knows?--she had read of such
things;--_perhaps_--Ah, in that perhaps lies a world of anguish! Love
will not hear of it. Love _dies_ for certainty. Against an uncertainty
who can brace the soul? We put all our forces of faith and prayer
against it, and it goes down just as