as I look
backwards I see that the struggles and trials which we have shared
together were really blessings.

"Nevertheless, dear Honora, you are, as your uncle wrote you, our
child, and nothing can alter that fact in our hearts. We can only
pray with all our strength that you may find happiness and peace in
your new life. I try to imagine, as I think of you and what has
happened to you in the few years since you have left us--how long
they seem!--I try to imagine some of the temptations that have
assailed you in that world of which I know nothing. If I cannot, it
is because God made us different. I know what you have suffered,
and my heart aches for you.

"You say that experience has taught you much that you could not
have--learned in any other way. I do not doubt it. You tell me
that your new life, just begun, will be a dutiful one. Let me
repeat that it is my anxious prayer that you have not builded upon
sand, that regrets may not come. I cannot say more. I cannot
dissemble. Perhaps I have already said too much.

"Your loving

"AUNT MARY."

An autumn wind was blowing, and Honora gazed out of the window at the
steel-blue, ruffled waters of the lake. Unconsciously she repeated the
words to herself:

"Builded upon sand!"

CHAPTER XIV. CONTAINING PHILOSOPHY FROM MR. GRAINGER

Swiftly came the autumn days, and swiftly went. A bewildering, ever
changing, and glorious panorama presented itself, green hillsides struck
first with flaming crimsons and yellows, and later mellowing into a
wondrous blending of gentler, tenderer hues; lavender, and wine, and the
faintest of rose colours where the bare beeches massed. Thus the slopes
were spread as with priceless carpets for a festival. Sometimes Honora,
watching, beheld from her window the russet dawn on the eastern ridge,
and the white mists crouching in strange, ghostly shapes abode the
lake and the rushing river: and she saw these same mists gather again,
shivering, at nightfall. In the afternoon they threaded valleys, silent
save for the talk between them and the stirring of the leaves under
their horses' feet.

So the Indian summer passed--that breathless season when even happiness
has its premonitions and its pangs. The umber fields, all ploughed and
harrowed, lay patiently awaiting the coming again of the quickening
spring. Then fell the rain, the first, cold winte