?"

"Perhaps not," said Heliet, gently.

"I hope He will take me soon," said Clarice. "Surely He can never leave
me long now!"

"Or, it may be, make thee content to wait His will."

Clarice shook her head, not so much with a negative air as with a
shrinking one. Just in that first agony, to be content with it seemed
beyond human nature.

Heliet laid her hand on that of her friend. "Dear, would you have had
Rosie suffer as you have done?"

For a moment Clarice's mental eyes ran forward, over what would most
likely, according to human prevision, have been the course of Rosie's
after life. The thought came to her as with a pang, and grew upon her,
that the future could have had no easy lot in store for Vivian
Barkeworth's daughter. He would have disposed of her without a thought
of her own wish, and no prayers nor tears from her would have availed to
turn him from his purpose. No--it was well with the child.

"Thou art right," she said, in a pained voice. "It is better for Rosie
as it is. But for me?"

"Leave that with God. He will show thee some day that it was better for
thee too."

Clarice rose from her seat; but not till she had said the one thing
which Heliet had been hoping that she would not say.

"Who could have laid those flowers there? Heliet, canst thou form any
idea? Dost thou think it _was_ an angel?"

Heliet had an excuse in settling her crutches for delaying her reply for
a moment. Then she said in a low tone, the source of whose tenderness
it was well that Clarice could not guess--"I am not sure, dear, that it
was not."

------------------------------------------------------------------------

If Clarice's sufferings had been passive before, they began to be active
now. Vivian made her life a torment to her by jealousy on the one hand,
and positive cruelty on the other; yet his manners in public were so
carefully veiled in courtesy that not one of her friends guessed how
much she really suffered. As much time as she could she spent in her
oratory, which was the only place where Vivian left her at peace, under
a vague idea that it would bring him ill luck to interrupt any one's
prayers. Unfortunately for Clarice, he had caught a glimpse of Piers,
and, having no conscientiousness in his own composition, he could not
imagine it in that of another. That Piers should be at Berkhamsted
without at least making an effort to open communication with Clarice,
was an idea which Vivian w