h by the
window, with her mother's old music-book--the keepsake which Mrs.
Vanstone had found in her husband's study on the day of her husband's
death--spread open on her lap. She looked up from it with such quiet
sorrow, and pointed with such ready kindness to the vacant place at her
side, that Miss Garth doubted for the moment whether Magdalen had spoken
the truth. "See," said Norah, simply, turning to the first leaf in
the music-book--"my mother's name written in it, and some verses to
my father on the next page. We may keep this for ourselves, if we keep
nothing else." She put her arm round Miss Garth's neck, and a faint
tinge of color stole over her cheeks. "I see anxious thoughts in your
face," she whispered. "Are you anxious about me? Are you doubting
whether I have heard it? I have heard the whole truth. I might have
felt it bitterly, later; it is too soon to feel it now. You have seen
Magdalen? She went out to find you--where did you leave her?"

"In the garden. I couldn't speak to her; I couldn't look at her.
Magdalen has frightened me."

Norah rose hurriedly; rose, startled and distressed by Miss Garth's
reply.

"Don't think ill of Magdalen," she said. "Magdalen suffers in secret
more than I do. Try not to grieve over what you have heard about us this
morning. Does it matter who we are, or what we keep or lose? What loss
is there for us after the loss of our father and mother? Oh, Miss Garth,
_there_ is the only bitterness! What did we remember of them when we
laid them in the grave yesterday? Nothing but the love they gave us--the
love we must never hope for again. What else can we remember to-day?
What change can the world, and the world's cruel laws make in _our_
memory of the kindest father, the kindest mother, that children ever
had!" She stopped: struggled with her rising grief; and quietly,
resolutely, kept it down. "Will you wait here," she said, "while I go
and bring Magdalen back? Magdalen was always your favorite: I want
her to be your favorite still." She laid the music-book gently on Miss
Garth's lap--and left the room.

"Magdalen was always your favorite."

Tenderly as they had been spoken, those words fell reproachfully on Miss
Garth's ear. For the first time in the long companionship of her pupils
and herself a doubt whether she, and all those about her, had not been
fatally mistaken in their relative estimate of the sisters, now forced
itself on her mind.

She had studied the natures