es
to be a mistake; and yet, as she always owned, she could not have borne
for any one else to have had the Holt.

Fortunately for her, the children were sleepy, and were rather in a mazy
state when lifted out and set on their legs in the wainscoted hall, and
she sent them at once with nurse to the cheerful room that Humfrey's
little visitors had saved from becoming disused. Miss Wells's fond
vigilance was a little oppressive, but she gently freed herself from it,
and opened the study door. She had begged that as little change as
possible might be made; and there stood, as she had last seen them, the
large leathern chair, the little table, the big Bible, and in it the
little faded marker she had herself constructed for his twenty-first
birthday, when her powers of making presents had not equalled her will.
Yet what costly gift could have fulfilled its mission like that one? She
opened the heavy book at the place. It was at the first lesson for the
last day of his life, the end of the prophet Hosea, and the first words
her eyes fell upon were the glorious prophecy--'I will redeem them from
death, I will ransom them from the power of the grave.' Her heart beat
high, and she stood half musing, half reading: 'They that dwell under His
shadow shall return; they shall revive as the corn, and grow as the
vine.' How gentle and refreshing the cadence! A longing rose up in her
to apply those latter words more closely, by placing them on his tablet;
she did not think they would shock his humility, a consideration which
had withheld her from choosing other passages of which she always thought
in connection with him. Another verse, and she read: 'Ephraim shall say,
What have I to do any more with idols?'

It brought back the postscript. Kind Humfrey must have seen strong cause
before he gave any reproof, least of all to her, and she could take his
word that the fault had been there. She felt certain of it when she
thought of her early devotion to Owen Sandbrook, and the utter blank
caused by his defection. Nay, she believed she had begun to idolize
Humfrey himself, but now, at her age, chastened, desponding, with nothing
before her save the lonely life of an heiress old maid, counting no tie
of blood with any being, what had she to engross her affections from the
true Object? Alas! Honora's heart was not feeling that Object
sufficient! Conscientious, earnest, truly loving goodness, and all
connected with it; striving a