r, you
know, she liked them so much."

It was just his one idea that Trevor had told him to take his place to
her. We looked doubtfully at each other, but Fulk quietly said, "Yes,
you may go." And added, as the boy went off, "It can do no harm to her
in the end, poor thing!"

"To her, no; that was not my fear."

There was Alured, almost exactly what Trevor had been when last she saw
him, with his bright sweet honest face over the rose, running up the
stairs, knocking, and coming in with his boyish, "Good morning, Hester,
I do hope you are better;" and bending down with his fresh brotherly
kiss on her poor hot forehead, "I've got this rose for you, the bud
will be out in a day or two."

If ever there was a modern version of St. Dorothy's roses it was there.

That boy's kiss and his gift touched the place in her heart. She
caught him passionately in her arms, and held him till he almost lost
breath, and then she held him off from her as vehemently.

"Boy--Trevorsham--what do you come to me for?"

"He told me," said Alured, half dismayed. "Besides, you are my sister."

"Sister, indeed! Don't you know we would have killed you?"

"Never mind that," said Alured, with an odd sort of readiness. "You
are my sister all the same, and oh--if you would let me try to be a
little bit of Trevor to you, though I know I can't--"

"You--who must hate me?"

"No," said he, "I always did like you, Hester; and I've been thinking
about you all the half--whenever I thought of him."

And as the tears came into the boy's eyes, the blessed weeping came at
last to Hester.

He thought he had done her harm, for she cried till she was absolutely
spent, sick, faint and weak as a child.

But she was like a child, and when her head was on the pillow she
begged for Trevorsham to wish her good-night. I think she tried to
fancy his kiss was Trevor's.

Any way the bitter black despair was gone from that time. She believed
in and accepted his kindness like a sort of after glow from Trevor's
love. Perhaps it did her the more good that after all he was only a
boy, sometimes forgot her, and sometimes hurried after his own
concerns, so that there was more excitement in it than if it had been
the steady certain tenderness of an older person on which she could
reckon.

She certainly cared for no one like Trevorsham. She even came
downstairs that she might see him more constantly, and while he was at
home, she seemed to think of no one