but
I can believe that I shall come to it some day, when I shall feel as
thankful for that trouble as I do feel now for having known poverty.
Yes, Hester, you are right. I was a hard woman, without imagination. I
have been taught in the only way I could learn--by experience. I have
been very fortunate."

Hester did not answer, but bent down and kissed Rachel's hands. It was
as if she had said, "Forgive me for finding fault with one so far above
me." And the action was so understood.

Rachel colored, and they sat for a moment hand close in hand, heart very
near to heart.

"How is it you are so sure of these things, Hester?" said Rachel, in a
whisper. "When you say them I see they are true, and I believe them, but
how do you _know_ them?"

A shadow, a very slight one, fell across Hester's face. "'Love knows the
secret of grief.' But can Love claim that knowledge if he is asked how
he came by it by one who should have known?" The question crept in
between the friends and moved them apart. Hester's voice altered.

"Minna would say that I picked them up from the conversation of James.
You know the Pratts are perfectly aware of what I have, of course, tried
to conceal, namely, that the love-scenes in the _Idyll_ were put
together from scraps I had collected of James's engagement to Minna. And
all the humorous bits are claimed by a colony of cousins in Devonshire
who say that any one 'who had heard them talk' could have written the
_Idyll._ And any one who had not heard them apparently. The so-called
profane passages are all that are left to me as my own."

"You are profane now," said Rachel, smiling, but secretly wounded by the
flippancy which she had brought upon herself.

A distant whoop distracted their attention, and they saw Regie galloping
towards them, imitating a charger, while Fraeulein and the two little
girls followed.

Regie stopped short before Rachel, and looked suspiciously at her.

"Where is Uncle Dick?" he said.

"I don't know," said Rachel, reddening, in spite of herself, and her
eyes falling guiltily before her questioner.

"Then he has not come with you?"

Regie's mind was what his father called "sure and steady." Mr. Gresley
often said he preferred a child of that kind to one that was
quick-witted and flashy.

"No, he has not come with me."

"Mary!" shrieked Regie, "he has not come."

"I knew he had not," said Mary. "When I saw he was not there I knew he
was somewhere else."

Dear l