eat favourite with me; it was less painful in its
details than other delineations of this subject: the face of the divine
sufferer wore an expression of tender pity. Beneath the cross the Blessed
Virgin and St. John stood with clasped hands,--adopted love and most
sacred responsibility,--receiving sanction and benediction.

I had scarcely hung it on the nail before Phoebe's querulous voice
remonstrated with me.

'Why can you not leave well alone, Miss Garston? I was thanking you in my
heart for the music, but you have just driven it away. I cannot have that
picture before my eyes; it is too painful.'

'You will not find it so,' I replied quietly; 'it is a little present I
have brought you. My dead brother bought it for me when he was a boy at
school, and it is one of the things I most prize. He is dead, you know,
and that makes it doubly dear to me. That is why I want you to have it,
because I have so much and you so little.'

My speech moved her a little, for her great eyes softened as she looked
at me.

'So you have been in trouble, too,' she said softly. 'And yet you can
sing like a bird that has lost its way and finds itself nearly at the
gate of Paradise.'

'Shall I tell you about my trouble?' I returned, sitting down by the
bed. It wrung my heart to talk of Charlie, but I knew the history of
his suffering and patience would teach Phoebe a valuable lesson.

An hour passed by unheeded, and when I had finished I exclaimed at the
lateness of the hour.

'Ay, you have tired yourself; you look quite pale,' was her answer; 'but
you have made me forget myself for the first time in my life.' She
stopped, and then with more effort continued, 'Come again to-morrow, and
I will tell you my trouble; it is worse than yours, and has made me the
crazy creature you see. Yes, I will tell you all about it'; but, half
crying, as though she had little hope of contesting my will, 'You will
not leave that picture to make my heart ache more than, it does now?'

'My poor Phoebe,' I said, kissing her, 'when your heart once aches for
the thought of another's sorrow your healing will have begun. Let that
picture say to you what no one has said to you before, "that all your
life you have been an idolater, that you have worshipped only yourself
and one other--"'

'Whom? What do you mean? Have you heard of Robert?' she asked excitedly.

'To-morrow is Sunday,' I returned, touching her softly. 'I am going to
church in the morning, and