of life without
any variation; but the radiant bright look of her face was permanently
saddened. She was just as sweet and companionable an assistant to her
aunt as ever; but from month to month Mrs. Caxton saw that a shadow lay
deep upon her heart. No shadow could have less of anything like hard
edges.

They had been sitting at work one night late in the winter, those two,
the aunt and the niece; and having at last put up her work Eleanor sat
gravely poring into the red coals on the hearth; those
thought-provoking, life-stirring, strange things, glowing and sparkling
between life and death like ourselves. Eleanor's face was very sober.

"Aunt Caxton," she said at length,--"my life seems such a confusion to
me!"

"So everything seems that we do not understand," Mrs. Caxton said.

"But is it not, aunty? I seem taken from everything that I ought most
naturally to do--papa, Julia, mamma. I feel like a banished person, I
suppose; only I have the strange feeling of being banished from my
place in the world."

"What do you think of such a life as Mr. Rhys is leading?"

"I think it is straight, and beautiful,"--Eleanor answered, looking
still into the fire. "Nothing can be further from confusion. He is in
_his_ place."

"He is in a sort of banishment, however."

"Not from that! And it is voluntary banishment--for his Master's sake.
_That_ is not sorrowful, aunt Caxton."

"Not when the Lord's banished ones make their home in him. And I do not
doubt but Mr. Rhys does that."

"Have you ever heard from him, aunt Caxton."

"Not yet. It is almost time, I think."

"It is almost a year and a half since he went."

"The communication is slow and uncertain," said Mrs. Caxton. "They do
not get letters there, often, till they are a year old."

"How impossible it used to be to me," said Eleanor, "to comprehend such
a life; how impossible to understand, that anybody should leave home
and friends and comfort, and take his place voluntarily in distance and
danger and heathendom. It was an utter enigma to me."

"And you understand it now?"

"O yes, aunty," Eleanor went on in the same tone; and she had not
ceased gazing into the coals;--"I see that Christ is all; and with him
one is never alone, and under his hand one can never be in danger. I
know now how his love keeps one even from fear."

"You are no coward naturally."

"No, aunt Caxton--not about ordinary things, except when conscience
made me so, some time ago."