They went towards the prostrate figure,--there were no divisions in the
Ashurst burying-ground,--and Miss Deborah stooped and touched her on the
shoulder, saying in a shocked voice, for Helen was shaken with sobs,
"Why, my dear child, what is the matter?"

Helen started violently, and then sat up, brushing the tears away, and
struggling to speak calmly. "I--I did not know any one was here."

"We were just going," Miss Ruth replied in her kind little voice, "but we
were grieved to see you troubled, my dear?"

Miss Ruth could not help saying it in a questioning way, for, in spite
of Ashurst traditions of parental love, it could hardly be imagined that
Helen was crying for a mother she had never known.

"You are very kind," Helen said, the tears still trembling in her eyes.
"Something did trouble me--and--and I came here."

The sisters spoke some gentle words of this young mother, dead now for
more than twenty years, and then went softly away, full of sympathy, yet
fearing to intrude, though wondering in their kind hearts what could be
the matter. But their curiosity faded; Mr. Denner's grave was a much more
important thing than Helen's unknown grief.

"I dare say she misses her husband?" Miss Ruth suggested.

But Miss Deborah thought that quite improbable. "For she could go home,
you know, if that was the case."

And here the sisters dropped the subject.

As for Helen, she still lingered in the silent graveyard. She felt, with
the unreasoning passion of youth, that the dead gave her more comfort
than the living. Lois had scarcely dared to speak to her since that talk
in their sitting-room, and Dr. Howe's silence was like a pall over the
whole house. So she had come here to be alone, and try to fancy what her
husband and her uncle had said to each other, for Dr. Howe had refused to
enter into the details of his visit.

His interview with her husband had only resulted in a greater bitterness
on the part of the rector. He had waited for John Ward's answer to his
letter, and its clear statement of the preacher's position, and its
assertion that his convictions were unchangeable, gave him no hope that
anything could be accomplished without a personal interview. Discussion
with a man who actually believed that this cruel and outrageous plan of
his, was appointed by God as a means to save his wife's soul, was absurd
and undignified, but it had to be. The rector sighed impatiently as he
handed her husband's letter to He