w miserable I am! Why--ah, why! does God take from me
my only child? Fortune and lands, everything else he might have taken,
if he would only have left me my child! This is the very hardest fate
that could have befallen me! Why must I suffer more than any one else in
the world?"

"Dear Mrs. Stanhope," said the doctor's wife, as she took the poor
lady's hand and pressed it tenderly in her own; "I feel for your sorrow,
but I beg you to think of what your child has gained. God has taken her
to himself, and she is free from pain and weariness forevermore, in his
sheltering arms. You do not know what poverty means! Think of the many
mothers who only see their children grow up to hard labor, and suffer
for want of food and clothing. Take the sorrow that God has sent you; do
not try to measure it with that of others; the sorrow that comes to each
seems the heaviest for each to bear. But our Father knows why he has
given each row, and the road he leads us is the one best for us to
follow."

Mrs. Stanhope became more tranquil as these words fell on her ear, but
her face still wore an expression of inconsolable grief. She was silent
a few moments, and then she told Mrs. Stein that she meant to take Nora
home and lay her beside the little boy in the garden by the Rhine, and
that she should send to her true friend and house-keeper Clarissa to
come at once to Oak-ridge to make the preparations for their return, and
accompany her on her painful journey. This arrangement was a great
relief to Mrs. Stein, who returned home with an easier mind, and
hastened to impart this bit of good news to her sister. But aunty was
nowhere to be found, and Emma, who was sitting alone in an unusually
subdued mood, told her mother that she was probably with Fred, who had
been looking for her, "to show her a beetle or some such thing," she
supposed! So Mrs. Stein sat down with her little girl, who wanted to ask
her questions about Nora. Emma longed to hear that Nora had not suffered
from her neglect, and had been contented and happy without her; for she
had been feeling more and more how selfish she had been in never
repeating her first visit, merely because she had not herself enjoyed
it, never thinking what she might have done for poor sick Nora.

Fred had sought his aunt for a long time, and when he found her he
carried her off to a remote part of the garden, where stood a lonely
summer-house. There he drew her down beside him on a bench, and said h