ed
suddenly at some winter resort, with the old name of Basil on her lips
that formed the word and then were forever still. Rose and Grace could
look upon those familiar features and behold the trace of beauty which
time and disease had tenderly spared. But Mary, the third daughter, blind
from her birth, could only feel the face of her beloved and kiss the lips
that could no longer speak her name. Blind! and without a mother, even if
she had been foolish for her years, and had, in an hour of human weakness,
yielded to a love which was useless, out of the question, unnatural. She
was twelve, yet the little blind maid was old enough to know her loss, to
feel her sorrow.

Rose, cold, selfish, unsympathetic, lamenting the loss of a lover whom she
had no power to hold more than the death of her mother, feeling no love
for the sister who had made for her sake a useless sacrifice, was not a
desirable companion for the little blind sister.

Grace, upon whom the care of the child had fallen these latter years, and
who had been faithful and loving to her charge, had begun to put worldly
things from her, and when that long-expected but sudden death came upon
them, she resolved, after much meditation and prayer, to enter some holy
order and lead a life dedicated to the Master.

Clad in the robes of a Carmelite nun, she may have been too unmindful of
the little blind one who had clung to her and plead with her not to leave
her alone with Rose. For after all, what is raiment even if it be fine,
aye, purple and fine linen; what is food, even if it be dainty like the
ambrosia of the Gods; what is warmth, what is comfort, what are all these
things if the heart be cold, naked and hungry? Grace had provided for her
bodily comforts, but she had failed to fill her own place left vacant with
some heart that would be kind and loving to Mary, blind and helpless.

After Grace entered the Carmelite Convent, which was many miles away from
their old home, Rose and Mary returned to the big smoky city, and were
swallowed up in the multitude of people who exist in buildings and houses,
where men and women huddle together and have, as they had, a certain
amount of comfort, but lose their identity, and are finally swept away
into that great stagnant pool of obscurity where existence in great cities
goes on and on without either ebb or flow.

The little blind maid was lonely and sick at heart. The noise and the cry
of the street smote her to the ear