do nothing but help
her silently in the long, hard work, day after day, summer and winter.
I read the books he had given me. I thought of the things he had said.
I sat in my chamber when the floor was scrubbed, and the bread baked, and
the dishes washed, and the flies buzzed in the hot, still kitchen. I can
hear them now. And there I sat, looking out of my window, straining my
eyes toward the horizon--sometimes sure that I heard him coming, clicking
the gate, hurrying up the gravel, with his eager, handsome, melancholy
face. I started up. My heart stood still. I was ready to fall upon his
breast and say, 'I believe 'twas all right.' He did not come. 'So help me
God!' he said, and did not come.

"My father brought me to New York to change the scene. But God had
brought me here to change my heart. I heard one Sunday good old Bishop
Asbury, and he began the work that Summerfield sealed. My parents
presently died. They left nothing, and I was the only child. I did what I
could, and at last I became your grandfather's housekeeper."

As her story proceeded Mrs. Simcoe looked more and more anxiously at
Hope, whose eyes were fixed upon her incessantly. The older woman paused
at this point, and, taking Hope's face between her hands, smoothed her
hair, and kissed her.

"Your grandfather had a daughter Mary."

"My mother," said Hope, earnestly.

"Your mother, darling. She was as beautiful but as delicate as a flower.
The doctors said a long salt voyage would strengthen her. So your
grandfather sent her in the ship of one of his friends to India. In India
she staid several weeks, and met a young man of her own age, clerk in a
house there. Of course they were soon engaged. But he was young, not
yet in business, and she knew the severity of your grandfather and his
ambition for her. At length the ship returned, and your mother returned
in it. Scarcely was she at home a month than your grandfather told me
that he had a connection in view for his daughter, and wanted me to
prepare her to receive the addresses of a gentleman a good deal older
than she, but of the best family, and in every way a desirable husband.
He was himself getting old, he said, and it was necessary that his
daughter should marry. Your mother loved me dearly, as I did her. Gentle
soul, with her soft, dark, appealing eyes, with her flower-like fragility
and womanly dependence. Ah me! it was hard that your grandfather should
have been her parent.

"She was stu