roads, lessens such difficulties between true friends. Bessie's
acquaintances came to call upon her, and she talked of the pleasure it
had been to her to revisit the scenes of her childhood, of the few
changes that had happened there since she came away, and of the
hospitality of Lady Latimer.

The lime trees were turning yellow and thin of leaf; there was a fire
all day in the octagon parlor. It was autumn in Woldshire, soon to be
winter. It seemed to Bessie on her return like resuming the dull routine
of a life that had gone on for a long while. Mrs. Stokes, as her nearest
and most neighborly neighbor, often ran across the park of an afternoon,
but Bessie's best delight was at post-time in the morning. Mr. Fairfax
never came down stairs to breakfast, and she had Harry Musgrave's
letters all to herself, undiscovered and undisturbed.

The squire never regained his strength or his perfect moral control, and
the peculiar tempers of his previous life seemed to be exaggerated as
his natural force decayed. Mr. Oliver Smith was his most frequent and
welcome visitor. They talked together of events past and of friends long
since dead. Perhaps this was a little wearisome and painful now and then
to Mr. Oliver Smith, who retained his youthful sprightliness amidst more
serious sentiments. He would have had his old friend contemplate the
great future that was approaching, instead of the unalterable past.

One day he said to Bessie, "I think your grandfather wanders in his mind
sometimes; I fear he is failing."

"I don't know," was her reflective answer. "His thoughts often run on
his sister Dorothy and Lady Latimer: I hear him mutter to himself the
same words often, 'It was a lifelong mistake, Olympia.' But that is
true, is it not? He is as clear and collected as ever when he dictates
to me a letter on business; he makes use of me as his secretary."

"Well, well! Let us hope, then, God may spare him to us for many years
to come," said Mr. Oliver Smith, with that conventional propriety of
speech which helps us through so many hard moments when feeling does not
dictate anything real to say.

Bessie dwelt for some days after on that pious aspiration of her
grandfather's old friend, but the ache and tedium of life did not return
upon her. Her sense of duty and natural affection were very strong. She
told herself that if it were her lot to watch for many years beside this
dwindling flame, it was a lot of God's giving, not of her ow