make amends.

Molly stood quite still after he had gone away, as motionless as a
living figure could stand, her grey eyes dilated and full of light.
Would he could have seen her! But if he had, would he have understood
what love meant in a heart that had never before been opened by any
great human affection? No love of father, mother, sister, or brother had
ever laid a claim on Molly. The whole kingdom of her affections had been
standing empty and ready, and now the hour of fulfilment was near.

"He will come again very soon," she whispered to herself. And then she
put her hand to her lips and kissed it where it had been kissed a moment
before, but with a devotion and reverence and gentleness that made the
last kiss a tragic contrast.

Presently, happier than she had ever been in her life before, Molly went
out to hear Mark Molyneux preach on sanctifying our common actions.

"No position is so hard" he said in his peroration, "no circumstances
are so difficult, no duties so conflicting, no temptations so mighty, as
not to be the means to lead us to God if we seek to do His will."

But the words seemed in no way appropriate to Molly's mind, which was
wholly occupied in a wordless song of thanksgiving.

CHAPTER XIX

LADY ROSE'S SCRUPLE

As Edmund Grosse was shown up-stairs to Lady Rose Bright, he passed a
young clergyman coming down. He found Rose standing with a worried look
in the middle of the room.

"Edmund! how nice," she said gently.

"What has that fellow been worrying you about?"

"It isn't his fault, poor man," said Rose, "only it's so sad. He has had
at last to close his little orphanage. You see, we used to give him L100
a year, and after David died I had to write and tell him that I couldn't
go on, and it has been a hard struggle for him since that. I don't think
he meant it, but when he came and saw this house"--she waved her hands
round the very striking furniture of the room--"I think he wondered, or
perhaps it was my fancy. You see, Edmund, I don't know how it is, but
I've overdrawn again. What do you think it can be? The housekeeping
comes to so little; I have only four servants, and----"

She paused, and there were tears in her eyes. She was wondering where
the orphans would go to. It was not like Rose to give way like this and
to have out her troubles at once. The fact was that she was finding how
much harder it is to help in good works without money than with. If she
had started