ne among allies.

Hester did not hear him.

She was gazing with an absorption that shut out all other sights and
sounds at the solitary blossom on the magnolia-tree. Yesterday it had
been a bud; but to-day the great almond-white petals which guarded it,
overlapping each other so jealously, had opened wide, and the perfect
flower, keeping nothing back, had laid bare all its pure white soul
before its God.

As Mr. Gresley stopped beside her, Hester turned her little pinched,
ravaged face towards him and smiled. Something of the passionate
self-surrender of the flower was reflected in her eyes.

"Dear Hester," he said, seeing only the wan, drawn face. "Are you ill?"

"Yes--no. I don't think so," said Hester, tremulously, recalled suddenly
to herself. She looked hastily about her. The world of dew and silver
had deserted her, had broken like an iridescent bubble at a touch. The
magnolia withdrew itself. Hester found herself suddenly transplanted
into the prose of life, emphasized by a long clerical coat and a bed of
Brussels sprouts.

"I missed you," said Mr. Gresley, with emphasis.

"Where? When?" Hester's eyes had lost their fixed look and stared
vacantly at him.

Mr. Gresley tried to subdue his rising annoyance.

Hester was acting, pretending not to understand, and he saw through it.

"At God's altar," he said, gravely, the priest getting the upper hand of
the man.

"Have you not found me there?" said Hester, below her breath, but so low
that fortunately her brother did not catch the words, and was spared
their profanity.

"I will appeal to her better feelings," he said to himself. "They must
be there, if I can only touch them."

He did not know that in order to touch the better feelings of our
fellow-creatures we must be able to reach up to them, or by reason of
our low stature we may succeed only in appealing to the lowest in them,
in spite of our tiptoe good intentions. Is that why such appeals too
often meet with bitter sarcasm and indignation?

But fortunately a robust belief in the assiduities of the devil as the
cause of all failures, and a conviction that who-so opposed Mr. Gresley
opposed the Deity, supported and blindfolded the young Vicar in
emergencies of this kind.

He spoke earnestly and at length to his sister. He waved aside her timid
excuse that she had overslept herself after a sleepless night, and had
finished dressing but the moment before he found her in the garden. He
entreated h