her
little girl beside her. She wept sadly during the service, but she
looked stronger now, and less suffering than she had been wont to do.
A niche seemed to have been found for her in the village of Culversham,
where she loved the poor people, and went about amongst the cottages,
and read to sick folk, and was happier, perhaps, than she quite knew,
in her own pathetic little way.

Kitty Sherard was bridesmaid and never cried at all. She wore
rose-colour, and carried Jane's bouquet, and during the whole of the
long day she smiled and was admired, and behaved as a bridesmaid in
rose-colour should. It is a comforting supposition, which many people
hold as a belief, that there are guardian angels, or spirits, which
watch round the beds of those who weep. Such a spirit, keeping watch
at Kitty Sherard's bed that night, and hearing her sobbing, may have
known something of her sorrow. Soldiers--men tell us who have seen
many battlefields--cover their faces when they are wounded, so that
their comrades may not see their drawn features and their pain. And
women wait until the lights are out before they begin to cry.

Perhaps a certain joy of living will come back to Kitty when hounds are
running and a good horse carries her well. To-night in the dark she
felt nothing but an intolerable sense of loss. Probably in a sorrow of
this sort the ache of it consists in a curious longing to get up and go
at once somewhere--anywhere--to the one who is loved, and the blankness
and the pity of it all centres round the fact that this is impossible.
The impotence of the feeling increases as means of communication in
this life are made easier. It seems absurd that, whereas we may
actually speak and hear the voice in reply of those who answer us while
we are hundreds of miles apart, there yet should be an insuperable
barrier between ourselves and those who, for aught we know, may be
quite near us. It seems almost as though we must be under a spell
which prevents the communication which we long for, and as though
almost any day we may wake up to find how unreal the separation is,
Kitty buried her face in the pillow and called Toffy's name, and--who
knows?--perhaps he heard her.

Sometimes I think Mrs. Avory may marry again, for her husband is
rapidly getting through his life in a laudable endeavour to live every
day of it, and there are times when I wonder if, in years to come, I
may see her established as the gentle and admiring w