with humility too,
before it was done; and Eleanor rose to her feet with an intense
feeling of the difference between her aunt's character and her own;
only equalled by her deep gladness at finding herself under the roof
where she was.

Her aunt then took a candle and lighted her through the tiled passages,
up some low wooden stairs, uncarpeted; along more passages; finally
into a large low matted chamber, with a row of little lattice windows.
Comfort and simplicity were in all its arrangements; a little fire
burning for her; Eleanor's trunks in a closet. When Mrs. Caxton had
shewed her all that was necessary, she set down her candle on the low
mantelshelf, and took Eleanor in her arms. Again those peculiar, gentle
firm kisses fell upon her lips. But instead of "good night," Mrs.
Caxton's words were,

"Do you pray for yourself, Eleanor?"

Eleanor dropped her head like a child on the breast before her. "Aunt
Caxton, I do not know how!"

"Then the Lord Jesus has not a servant in Eleanor Powle?"

Eleanor was silent, thoughts struggling.

"You have not learned to love him, Eleanor?"

"I have only learned to wish to do it, aunt Caxton! I do wish that. It
was partly that I might seek it, that I wanted to come here."

Then Eleanor heard a deep-spoken, "Praise the Lord!" that seemed to
come out from the very heart on which she was leaning. "If you have a
mind to seek him, my dear, he is willing that you should find. 'The
Lord is good to the soul that seeketh him.'"

She kissed Eleanor on the two temples, released her and went down
stairs. And Eleanor sat down before her fire, feeling as if she were in
a paradise.

It was all the more so, from the unlikeness of everything that met her
eye, to all she had known before. The chimney-piece at which she was
looking as she sat there--it was odd and quaint as possible, to a
person accustomed only to the modern fashions of the elegant world; the
fire-tongs and shovel would have been surely consigned to the kitchen
department at Ivy Lodge. Yet the little blazing fire, framed in by its
rows of coloured tiles, looked as cheerfully into Eleanor's face as any
blaze that had ever greeted it. All was of a piece with the fireplace.
Simple to quaintness, utterly plain and costless, yet with none of the
essentials of comfort forgotten or neglected; from the odd little
lattice windows to the tiled floor, everything said she was at a great
distance from her former life, and Mr. Carlis