g happy?
Who knows best? You or God?"

"If the postman had given me the letter, and not to father," she
murmured dully, "if father had not been stricken down with illness the
very next day, if I had only had this letter two years ago, instead of
to-day . . ."

And the sentence was left unfinished, broken by a bitter sigh of regret.

"If it all had been as you say, my child," said Pater Bonifacius kindly,
"then you might perhaps have been happy according to your own light,
whereas now you are going to be happy in accordance with that of God."

She shook her head and once more her eyes filled with tears.

"I shall never be happy again," she whispered.

"Oh, yes, you will, my dear," retorted the kindly old man, whose rugged
face--careworn and wrinkled--was lit up with a half-humorous, wholly
indulgent smile; "it is wonderful what a capacity for happiness the good
God has given to us all. The only thing is that we can't always be happy
in our own way; but the other ways--if they are God's ways--are very
much better, believe me. Why He chose to part you from Andor," he added,
with touching simplicity, "why He chose to withhold that letter from you
until to-night, we shall probably never know. But that it was His way
for your future happiness, of that I am convinced."

"There could have been no harm this time, Pater, in Andor and I being
happy in our way. There could be no wrong in two people caring for one
another, and wanting to live their lives together."

"Ah! that we shall never know, my child. The book of the
'might-have-been' is a closed one for us. Only God has the power to turn
over its pages."

"Andor and I would have been so happy!" she reiterated, with the
obstinacy of a vain regret; "and life would have been an earthly
paradise."

"And perhaps you would have forgotten heaven in that earthly paradise;
who knows, your happiness might have drawn you away from God, you might
have spent your life in earthly joys, you might have danced and sung and
thought more and more of pleasure, and less and less of God. Who knows?
Whereas now you are just going to be happy in God's way: you are going
to do your duty by your mother and your father, and, above all, by your
husband. You are going to fill your life by thoughts of God first and
then of others, instead of filling it with purely selfish joys. You are
going to walk up the road of life, my child, with duty to guide you over
the roughnesses and hard stones that