ands yet what has happened. Oh, what will she do?"

Lucy's heart was repeating the same question. All her sympathies were
called forth by so crushing a sorrow, and as she could do nothing else
for her cousin, she prayed earnestly that He who could, would bind up
the broken heart.

Sophy remained for two days in her own room, and then came down again
to join the family circle, evidently trying her best to avoid any
outward demonstration of sorrow, though her deadly paleness, and eyes
which looked as if they never closed, told how acutely she was
suffering. She was not of a nature to encourage or even bear sympathy,
and almost resented any instance of special consideration which seemed
to spring from pity for her great sorrow.

It was only when shut up in her own room that she gave way to the
bursts of agonized feeling which, to some extent, relieved the
constant pressure upon her heart. When in the family, she seemed to
seek constant employment, not in the light reading in which she had
been accustomed to indulge, but in books requiring much more thought,
and even some effort to master them. Lucy's class-books were called
into requisition, and her drawing was resumed, though she now shrank
from touching the disused piano. She had a good deal of artistic
talent; and had art ever been placed before her as an ennobling
pursuit, she might have attained very considerable excellence in some
of its departments. But hitherto she had confined herself to the
execution of a few graceful trifles, since her drawing-lessons had
been given up on leaving school. Now, however, she seemed to have
taken a fresh start, and copied studies and practised touches
indefatigably, without speaking or moving for hours.

She would sit, too, for half the morning apparently absorbed in a
book; but Lucy noticed that, while thus seemingly occupied, she would
gaze abstractedly at a page for long intervals without seeming to turn
a leaf or get a line farther on. Lucy longed to be able to direct the
mourner to the "balm in Gilead," whose efficacy she knew by
experience,--to the kind Physician who can bind up so tenderly the
wounds that other healers cannot touch without aggravating. But she
dared not utter a word of the sympathies of which her heart was full,
and could only pray that a Higher Hand might deal with the sufferer.

One wet Sunday evening in April, Lucy came down in her waterproof
cloak and rubbers, ready to set out for the neighbouring ch