cy," said Margaret, stroking the thin little hand that lay
on the white coverlet; "Dr. Kirby says you are much better." She spoke
with the optimism that belongs to the sick-room, but in her heart she
had another opinion. A change had come over Mrs. Thorne's face, the
effect of which was very striking; it was not so much the increase of
pallor, or a more wasted look, as the absence of that indomitable spirit
which had hitherto animated its every fibre, so that from the smooth
scanty light hair under the widow's cap down to the edges of the firm
little jaws there had been so much courage, and, in spite of the
constant anxiety, so much resolution, that one noticed only that. But
now, in the complete departure of this expression (which gleamed on only
in the eyes), one saw at last what an exhausted little face it was, how
worn out with the cares of life, finished, ready for the end.

"Yes, I am better, it is true, for the present," whispered Mrs. Thorne.
"But that is all. My mother and my two sisters died of slow consumption,
I shall die of the rapid kind. I shall die and leave Garda. Do you
comprehend what that is to me--to die and leave Garda?" Her gaze, as she
said this, was so clear, there was such a far-seeing intelligence in it,
such a long experience of life, and (it almost seemed) such a prophetic
knowledge of death, that the younger woman found herself forced to make
answer to the mental strength within rather than to the weakness of the
physical frame which contained it. "Why am I taken now, just when she
will need me most?" went on the mother's whisper, which contrasted so
strangely in its feebleness with the power of her gaze. "Garda had only
me. And now I am called. What will become of her?"

"You have warm friends here, Mrs. Thorne; they are all devoted to Garda.
It has seemed to me that to each one of them she was as dear as an own
child."

"Yes, she is. They would do anything in the world they could for her.
But, I ask you, what can they do? The Kirbys, the Moores, Betty Carew,
and Madam Giron, Madam Ruiz--what can they do? Nothing! And Garda--oh,
Garda needs some one who is--different."

Margaret did not reply to this; and after a moment Mrs. Thorne went on.

"When Mr. Winthrop buys the place," she said, with the touching Gracias
confidence that a few thousands would constitute wealth, "my child need
not be a charge, pecuniarily. But of course I know that in other ways
she might be. And I cannot leave h