es, He could have made me quite right,
and well. Why didn't He, father?"

"I don't know, my son."

"_You_ would make me better if you could! You said yourself you'd pay
the doctor all your money. You are kinder than Him. I don't think God
_is_ kind to me, father. It would have been so easy for Him--"

The wisdom for which Francis had prayed and struggled seemed a poor
thing at that moment. He was dumb, and yet he dared not be dumb.

"Frankie," he said, "I'll tell you a secret--a secret between you and
me... God sent me a great many blessings when I was young, and they did
me no good. I was selfish, and careless, and blind, too, Frankie,
though my eyes could see, and then after He had tried me with happiness
and it had failed, He sent me"--the man's voice trembled ominously--"_a
great grief_! ... Frankie, old man, when I come to die, I believe I am
going to thank God for that grief, more than for all the blessings which
went before."

The child sat silent, struggling for comprehension.

"What did the great grief _do_ to you, father?"

Francis paused for a moment, struggling for composure. Then he spoke:

"_It stabbed my dead heart wide awake_!"

He stooped and kissed the child's blind eyes.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE GIRL WHO ASKED FOR HAPPINESS.

Fate is a sorry trickster, and a study of life leads one to the
conclusion that the less that is asked of her the less does she bestow.

Meriel, on her part, had made few demands--riches and power had for her
no allure; her highest ambition was to attain that quiet domestic
happiness enjoyed by thousands of her sister women. She wanted to be
loved and to love in return; to transform some trivial villa into a
home, and reign therein over her little kingdom; and on her
twenty-eighth birthday fate had so wrought the tangled skein that she
found herself in the position of unpaid attendant to an old school
friend, while her heart was racked by a hopeless passion for the same
friend's husband.

The way of it was this. Meriel and Flora had been school friends,
between whom existed the affection which often develops between a strong
and a weak character when they are thrown into intimate companionship.
Flora was pretty and gay, qualities which in a young girl blind the eyes
of beholders to many drawbacks. Meriel was quite resigned to be blinded
herself, but some two or three years after the two girls had left school
she heard with amazement that Flora was en