'am--what could I do? I just laid and cried in my
bitterness of heart--like the night you was here, ma'am; till the day
that Mr. Rhys came again and talked--and prayed--O he prayed!--and my
trouble went away and the light came. O Miss Eleanor, if you would hear
Mr. Rhys speak! I don't know how;--but if you'd hear him, you'd know
all that man can tell."

Eleanor stood silent. Jane looked at her with eyes of wistful regard,
but panting already from the exertion of talking.

"But how are you different to-day, Jane, from what you were the other
night?--except in being happy."

"Ma'am," said the girl speaking with difficulty, for she was
excited,--"then I was blind. Now I see. I ain't different no ways--only
I have seen what the Lord has done for me--and I know he loves me--and
he's forgiven me my sins. He's forgiven me!--And now I go singing to
myself, like, all the day and the night too, 'I love the Lord, and my
Lord loves me.'"

The water had slowly gathered in Jane's eyes, and the cheek flushed;
but her sweet happy regard never varied except to brighten.

"Jane, you must talk no more," said Eleanor. "What can I do for you?
only tell me that."

"Would Miss Eleanor read a bit?"

What would become of Mr. Carlisle's patience? Eleanor desperately
resolved to let it take care of itself, and sat down to read to Jane at
the open page where the girl's look and finger had indicated that she
wished her to begin. And the very first words were, "Let not your heart
be troubled."

Eleanor felt her voice choke; then clearing it with a determined effort
she read on to the end of the chapter. But if she had been reading the
passage in its original Greek, she herself would hardly have received
less intelligence from it. She had a dim perception of the words of
love and words of glory of which it is full; she saw that Mr. Rhys's
"helmet" was at the beginning of it, and the "peace" he had preached
of, at the end of it; yet those words which ever since the day they
were spoken have been a bed of rest to every heart that has loved their
Author, only straitened Eleanor's heart with a vision of rest afar off.

"I must go now, dear Jane," she said as soon as the reading was ended.
"What else would you like, that I can do for you?"

"I'm thinking I want nothing, Miss Eleanor," said the girl calmly,
without moving the eyes which had looked at Eleanor all through the
reading. "But--"

"But what? speak out."

"Mother says you can do a