all?" she exclaimed, clasping her hands.
"Was your patient as sick as I was? Weren't his parents glad that you
made him well again?"

Lloyd put her hand over the little girl's mouth.

"Let us not talk any 'shop,' Hattie," she said, trying to smile.

But on the morning after her arrival Lloyd woke in her own white room of
the old farmhouse, abruptly conscious of some subtle change that had
occurred to her overnight. For the first time since the scene in the
breakfast-room at Medford she was aware of a certain calmness that had
come to her. Perhaps she had at last begun to feel the good effects of
the trial by fire which she had voluntarily undergone--to know a certain
happiness that now there was no longer any deceit in her heart. This she
had uprooted and driven out by force of her own will. It was gone. But
now, on this morning, she seemed to feel that this was not all.

Something else had left her--something that of late had harassed her and
goaded her and embittered her life, and mocked at her gentleness and
kindness, was gone. That fierce, truculent hatred that she had so
striven to put from her, now behold! of its own accord, it had seemed to
leave her. How had it happened? Before she had dared the ordeal of
confession this feeling of hatred, this perverse and ugly changeling
that had brooded in her heart, had seemed too strong, too deeply seated
to be moved. Now, suddenly, it had departed, unbidden, without effort on
her part.

Vaguely Lloyd wondered at this thing. In driving deceit from her it
would appear that she had also driven out hatred, that the one could not
stay so soon as the other had departed. Could the one exist apart from
the other? Was there, then, some strange affinity in all evil, as,
perhaps, in all good, so that a victory over one bad impulse meant a
victory over many? Without thought of gain or of reward, she had held to
what was right through the confusion and storm and darkness. Was this to
be, after all, her reward, her gain? Possibly; but she could not tell,
she could not see. The confusion was subsiding, the storm had passed,
but much of the darkness yet remained. Deceit she had fought from out
her heart; silently Hatred had stolen after it. Love had not returned to
his old place, and never, never would, but the changeling was gone, and
the house was swept and garnished.

VIII.

The day after the funeral, Bennett returned alone to Dr. Pitts's house
at Medford, and the same