er loss. For he was the only one in the world in whose
heart it was to give her good earnest kisses like that; and he was
away, away! Her father's affection for her was undoubted, nevertheless
it was not his wont to give it that sort of expression. Esther was not
comparing, however, nor reflecting; only filled with the sense of her
loss, which for the moment chilled and stiffened her. She heard her
father's voice calling her, and she went in.

'My dear, you stay too long in the cold. Is William gone?'

'Oh yes, papa.'

'This is not the right paper I want; this is an August paper. I want
the one for the last week in July.'

Esther went and rummaged again among the pile of newspapers,
mechanically, finding it hard to command her attention to such an
indifferent business. She brought the July paper at last.

'Papa, do you think he will ever come back?' she asked, trembling with
pain and the effort not to show it.

'Come back? Who? William Dallas? Why shouldn't he come back? His
parents are here; if he lives, he will return to them, no doubt.'

Esther sat down and said no more. The earth seemed to her dreadfully
empty.

CHAPTER XIII.

_LETTERS_.

And so life seemed for many days to the child. She could not shake off
the feeling, nor regain any brightness of spirit. Dull, dull,
everything in earth and heaven seemed to be. The taste and savour had
gone out of all her pleasures and occupations. She could not read,
without the image of Pitt coming between her and the page; she could
not study, without an unendurable sense that he was no longer there nor
going to be there to hear her lessons. She had no heart for walks,
where every place recalled some memory of Pitt, and what they had done
or said there together; she shunned the box of coins, and hardly cared
to gather one of the few lingering fall flowers. And the last of them
were soon gone, for the pleasant season was ended. Then came rains and
clouds and winds, and Esther was shut up to the house.

I can never tell how desolate she was. Truly she was only a girl of
thirteen; she ought not to have been desolate, perhaps, for any no
greater matter. She had her father, and her books, and her youth. Bat
Esther had also a nature delicate and deep far beyond what is common;
and then she was unduly matured by her peculiar life. Intercourse with
light-hearted children like herself had not kept her thoughtless and
careless. At thirteen Esther was looking into li