neral. A pelting rain
beat upon the windows, over which the blinds had been drawn; the great
silence which reigned in the chamber above, in which the dead master of
Heron lay, brooded over the whole house, and seemed in no part of it
more intense than in this great, book-lined room, in which Godfrey
Heron had spent so much of his life.

Ida lay back in the great arm-chair in which he had sat, her small
brown hands lying limply in her lap, her eyes fixed absently upon the
open book which lay on the table as he had left it. The pallor of her
face, increased by her sorrow, was accentuated by the black dress,
almost as plainly made as that which the red-eyed Jessie wore in her
kitchen. Though nearly a week had elapsed since her father had died in
her young arms, and notwithstanding her capacity for self-reliance, Ida
had not yet recovered from the stupor of the shock.

She was scarcely thinking as she lay back in his chair and looked at
the table over which he had bent for so many monotonous years; she
scarcely realised that he had passed out of her life, and that she was
alone in the world; and she was only vaguely conscious that her sorrow
had, so to speak, a double edge; that she had lost not only her father,
but the man to whom she had given her heart, the man who should have
been standing beside her now, shielding her with his strong arms,
comforting her with words of pity and love. The double blow had fallen
so suddenly, so unexpectedly, that the pain of it had been dulled and
blunted. The capacity of human nature for suffering is, after all not
unlimited. God says to physical pain and mental anguish, "Thus far and
no farther;" and this limitation saved Ida from utter collapse.

Then, again, she was not free to indulge in idle grief, in the luxury
of woe; the great house had still to be run, she had to bury her
beloved dead, the mourning which seems such a hopeless mockery when the
heart is racked with misery, had to be seen to; and she did it, and
went through it all, with outward calm, sustained by that Heron spirit
which may be described as the religion of her class--_noblesse oblige_.
Jessie had wept loudly through the house ever since the death, and
could weep as loudly now; but if Ida shed any tears she wept in the
silence and darkness of her own room, and no one heard her utter a
moan. "To suffer in silence and be strong" was the badge of all her
tribe, and she wore it with quiet stoicism.

Godfrey Heron's