tient face quiver, and Regina
remembered that Mrs. Mason's only daughter had married a gentleman
connected with the English Board of Missions, and with her husband
and babe perished in the Sepoy butchery.

Dropping the fragrant geranium sprig that so tormented the cat, the
girl's fingers interlaced tightly, and she asked almost under her
breath:

"Is Mr. Lindsay's health seriously impaired?"

"I hope not Elise merely said he had had two severe attacks of
pneumonia, and it rendered her anxious. No man of his age ranks
higher in the ministry than Douglass Lindsay, and as an Oriental
scholar I am told he has few equals in this country. His death would
be a great loss to his church, and----"

"Oh, do not speak of it! How can you? It would kill his mother,"
cried Regina, passionately, clasping her hands across her eyes, as if
to shut out some horrible vision.

"Let us pray God to mercifully avert such a heavy blow. But, my dear,
keep this in mind: with terrible bereavement comes the strength to
bear it. The strength of endurance,--a strength born only in the
darkest hours of a soul's anguish; and at last when affliction has
done its worst, and all earthly hope is dead, patience with tender
grace and gentle healing mutely sits down in hope's vacant place.
To-day I found a passage in a new book that impressed me as
beautiful, strong, and true. Would you like to hear it?"

"If it will teach me patience, please let me hear it."

"Give me the book lying on the lounge."

She opened it, put on her spectacles, and read:

"There is the peace of surrendered, as well as of fulfilled,
hopes,--the peace, not of satisfied, but of extinguished
longings,--the peace, not of the happy love and the secure fireside,
but of unmurmuring and accepted loneliness,--the peace, not of the
heart which lives in joyful serenity afar from trouble and from
strife, but of the heart whose conflicts are over, and whose hopes
are buried,--the peace of the passionless as well as the peace of the
happy;--not the peace which brooded over Eden, but that which crowned
Gethsemane.'"

"My dear Regina, only religion brings this blessed calm; this is
indeed that promised 'Peace that passeth all understanding,' and
therefore we would all do well to heed the words of Isaiah: 'Their
strength is to sit still.'"

Looking reverently up at her pale, worn placid face, the girl thought
it might have been considered a psalm of renunciation. Almost
sorrowfully she