d Margaret. After a pause, she added, "Do
you believe it, Hester?"

"I am sure I do not know. I should not rate Mrs Rowland's word very
highly: but this would be such a prodigious falsehood! It is possible,
however, that she may believe it without its being true. Or, such a
woman might make the most, for the occasion, of a mere suspicion of her
own."

"I do not believe it is true," repeated Margaret.

"At all events," concluded Hester, "nothing that Mrs Rowland says is
worth regarding. I was foolish to let myself be ruffled by her."

Margaret tried to take the lesson home, but it was in vain. She was
ruffled; and, in spite of every effort, she did believe in the existence
of the nameless young lady. It had been a day of trouble; and thus was
it ending in fresh sorrow and fear.

Morris came in, hesitated at the door, was told she might stay, and
immediately busied herself in the brushing of hair and the folding of
clothes. Many tears trickled down, and not a word was spoken, till all
the offices of the toilet were finished. Morris then asked, with a
glance at the book-shelf, whether she should go or stay.

"Stay, Morris," said Hester, gently. "You shall not suffer for our
being unhappy to-night. Margaret, will you, can you read?"

Margaret took the volume in which it was the sisters' common practice to
read together, and with Morris at night. While Morris took her seat,
and reverently composed herself to hear, Margaret turned to the words
which have stilled many a tempest of grief, from the moment when they
were first uttered to mourners, through a long course of centuries, "Let
not your heart be troubled." "Believe in God; believe in me." Morris
sometimes spoke on these occasions. She loved to hear of the many
mansions in the House of the Father of all; and she said that though it
might seem to her young ladies that their parents had gone there full
soon, leaving them to undergo trouble by themselves, yet she had no
doubt they should all be at peace together, sooner or later, and their
passing troubles seem as nothing. Even this simple and obvious remark
roused courage in the sisters. They remembered what their father had
said to them about his leaving them to encounter the serious business
and trials of life, and how they had promised to strive to be wise and
trustful, and to help each other. This day the serious business and
trials of life had manifestly begun: they must strengthen themselves