fe, and finding it
already confused and dark. At thirteen also she was learning and
practising self-command. Her father, not much of an observer unless in
the field of military operations, had no perception that she was
suffering; it never occurred to him that she might be solitary; he
never knew that she needed his tenderest care and society and guidance.
He might have replaced everything to Esther, so that she would have
found no want at all. He did nothing of the kind. He was a good man;
just and upright and highly honourable; but he was selfish, like most
men. He lived to himself in his own deprivation and sorrow, and never
thought but that Esther would in a few days get over the loss of her
young teacher and companion. He hardly thought about it at all. The
idea of filling Pitt's place, of giving her in his own person what left
her when Pitt went away, did not enter his head. Indeed, he had no
knowledge of what Pitt had done for her. If he had known it, there is
little doubt it would have excited his jealousy. For it is quite in
some people's nature to be jealous of another's having what they do not
want themselves.

And so Esther suffered in a way and to a degree that was not good for
her. Her old dull spiritless condition was creeping upon her again. She
realized, more than it is the way of thirteen years old to realize,
that something more than an ocean of waters--an ocean of
circumstances--had rolled itself between her and the one friend and
companion she had ever had. Pitt said he would return; but four or five
years, for all present purposes, is a sort of eternity at her age; hope
could not leap over it, and expectation died at the brink. Her want of
comfort came back in full force; but where was the girl to get it?

The sight of Mr. and Mrs. Dallas used to put her in a fever. Once in a
while the two would come to make an evening call upon her father; and
then Esther used to withdraw as far as possible into a corner of the
room and watch and listen; watch the looks of the pair with a kind of
irritated fascination, and listen to their talk with her heart jumping
and throbbing in pain and anxiety and passionate longing. For they were
Pitt's father and mother, and only the ocean of waters lay between him
and them, which they could cross at any time; he belonged to them, and
could not be separated from them. All which would have drawn Esther
very near to them and made them delightful to her, but that she knew
v