ed the change in her and done
something to have helped her to live! Oh! Miss Bright, I feel it is
owing to the doctor's neglect that I have lost my child. Why didn't he
come last night?"

Honor's eyes fell before the anguish in hers. "He was at dinner with us,
and left us early intending to come on here. I don't know why he changed
his mind," she murmured, feeling again the rush of wild resentment
against Joyce Meredith for her beauty and allurement.

"How strangely you talk!" Mrs. Meek went on as Honor relapsed into
silence. "I never heard any one speak or think like this."

"I have always felt that nothing harsh or bad can come from God," said
Honor gravely. "He does not treat us cruelly just to make us turn to
Him. It would have the opposite effect, I should imagine, and He knows
that as he knows us. It is presumptuous of me to say anything at all,
but it seems to me, we are responsible for much of our own sorrows, or
it is the way of life since the Fall. Humanity has foiled the designs of
God from the time of Adam, and has had to bear the consequences. But,
always, God's goodness and mercy triumph, and we are helped through the
heaviest of tribulation till our sorrows are healed. Pity and Love are
from God, never agony and bereavement!"

"Yet my husband says that the _cross is from God_, a 'burden imposed for
the hardness of our hearts'!"

"So that to punish you, God is supposed to have caused an innocent one
all that suffering, and has snatched her from the simple joys of her
life! Is that your husband's conception of a loving God? If I believed
that, I would become a heathen, preferably."

"It doesn't seem to fit in with such attributes as Mercy and Love!"
cried Mrs. Meek, relapsing again into a flood of grief; for, after all,
there was poor consolation for her in any theory since nothing could
restore to her her beloved child.

"Tell me," said Honor to the nurse who had led her to the adjoining room
to take her last look at her dead friend, "wasn't her death rather
sudden and unexpected?"

"The doctor should have been here last night," said the nurse looking
scared and uncomfortable. "She was so wild and restless and kept
exciting herself in her delirium. Her heart was bad and nothing seemed
to have effect. He should have been here, and not left her to me for so
many hours, since early morning!"

"When did the change set in?--could no one have gone for the doctor?"

"It is a great misfortune that ther