ouching in the gentle gravity with which she did everything, and the
grace of tenderness which she had for everybody. Daisy was going through
great trouble. Not only the trouble of what was past, but the ordeal of
what was to come. It hung over her like a black cloud, and her fears
were like muttering thunder. But the sense of right, the love of the
Master in whose service she was suffering, the trust in his guiding
hand, made Daisy walk with that strange, quiet dignity between the one
Sunday and the other. Mr. Randolph fancied sometimes when she was
looking down, that he saw the signs of sadness about her mouth; but
whenever she looked up again, he met such quiet, steady eyes, that he
wondered. He was puzzled; but it was no puzzle that Daisy's cheeks grew
every day paler, and her appetite less.

"I do not wish to flatter you"--said Mrs. Gary one evening--"but that
child has very elegant manners! Really, I think they are very nearly
perfect. I don't believe there is an English court beauty who could
shew better."

"The English beauty would like to be a little more robust in her
graces," remarked Gary McFarlane.

"That is all Daisy wants," her aunt went on; "but that will come, I
trust, in time."

"Daisy would do well enough," said Mrs. Randolph, "if she could get some
notions out of her head."

"What, you mean her religious notions? How came she by them, pray?"

"Why there was a person here--a connexion of Mrs. Sandford's--that set
up a Sunday school in the woods; and Daisy went to it for a month or
two, before I thought anything about it, or about him. Then I found she
was beginning to ask questions, and I took her away."

"Is asking questions generally considered a sign of danger?" said Gary
McFarlane.

"What was that about her singing the other night?" said Mrs. Gary--"that
had something to do with the same thing, hadn't it?"

"Refused to sing an opera song because it was Sunday."

"Ridiculous!" said Mrs. Gary. "I'll try to make her see it so
herself--if I get a chance. She is a sensible child."

Mr. Randolph was walking up and down the room, and had not spoken a
word. A little time after he found himself nearly alone with Mrs.
Randolph, the others having scattered away. He paused near his wife's
sofa.

"Daisy is failing," he said. "She has lost more this week than she had
gained in the two months before."

Mrs. Randolph made no answer, and did not even move her handsome head,
or her delicate hands.