d been left behind in England, in the
family of a maiden aunt, her father's sister, who lived on her own
property, which was situated between the Riverton estate and the town of
Franchope. She had inherited from her father a small independence, and
from both parents the priceless legacy of a truly Christian example, and
the grace that rests on the child in answer to the prayers of faith and
love.

The world considered her position a highly-favoured one, for her aunt
would no doubt leave her her fortune and estate when she died; for she
had already as good as adopted her niece, from whom she received all the
attention and watchful tenderness which she needed continually, by
reason of age and manifold infirmities. But while our life has its
outer convex side, which magnifies its advantages before the world, it
has its inner concave side also, which reduces the outer circumstances
of prosperity into littleness, when "the heart knoweth its own
bitterness, and a stranger doth not intermeddle with its joy." So it
was with Mary Stansfield. She had a refined and luxurious home, and all
her wants supplied. She was practically mistress of the household, and
had many friends and acquaintances in the families of the neighbouring
gentry, several of whom had country seats within easy walk or drive of
her home. Yet there was a heavy cross in her lot, and its edges were
very sharp. In her aged aunt, with whom she lived, there were a
harshness of character, and an inability to appreciate or sympathise
with her niece, which would have made Mary Stansfield's life a burden to
her had it not been for her high sense of duty, her patient charity, and
God's abiding-grace in her heart. Misunderstood, thwarted at every
turn, her attentions misinterpreted, her gentle forbearance made the
object of keen and relentless sarcasm or lofty reproof, her supposed
failings and shortcomings exposed and commented upon with ruthless
bitterness, while yet the tongue which wounded never transgressed the
bounds imposed by politeness, but rather chose the blandest terms
wherewith to stab the deepest,--hers was indeed a life whose daily
strain taxed the unostentatious grace of patience to the utmost, and
made her heart often waver, while yet the settled will never lost its
foothold.

How gladly, had she consulted self, would she have left her gilded
prison and joined some congenial sister, as her own means would have
permitted her to do, in work for God