injury at his going. Yet perhaps it was as well.
Between the turmoil of the past London season, the coming turmoil of
the wedding, and the large and serious issues which that wedding
involved, this time of solitude might be salutary. To Katherine, just
now, it seemed as a bridge carrying her over from one way of life to
another. A but slightly known country lay ahead. Solitude and
self-recollection are good for the soul if it would possess itself in
peace. The fair brightness of the Indwelling Light had not been
obscured in her during these months devoted to the world and to
society. But it was inevitable that her consciousness of it, and
consequently its clear-shining, should have suffered diminution at
times. The eager pressure of things to be done, things to be seen, of
much conversation, the varied pageant of modern life perpetually
presented to her eyes and her intelligence, could not but crowd out the
spiritual order somewhat. Of late she had had only time to smile upon
her God in passing, instead of spending long hours within the courts of
His temple. This she knew. It troubled her a little. She desired to
return to a condition of more complete self-collectedness. And so, the
first movement of surprise past, she hailed her solitude as a means of
grace, and strove, in sweet sincerity, to make good use of it.

And yet--since the human heart, if sound and wholesome, hungers, even
when penetrated by Godward devotion, for some fellow-creature on whom
to expend its tenderness--Katherine, just now, regretted to be alone.
The scene was so beautiful, she would gladly have had some one look on
it beside herself, and share its charm. Then thoughts of the future
obtruded themselves. How would little Constance Quayle view Brockhurst?
Would it claim her love? Would she embrace the spirit of it, and make
it not only the home of her fair young body, but the home of her
guileless heart? Katherine yearned in spirit over this girl standing on
the threshold of all the deeper experiences of a woman's life, of those
amazing revelations which marriage holds for an innocent and modest
maiden.--But oh! how lovely are such revelations when the lover is also
the beloved!

Katherine moved on a few paces. The thought of all that, even now at
forty-eight, cut her a little too sharply. It is not wise to call up
visions of joys that are dead. She would think of something else, so
she told herself, as she paused in her rustling gray dress upon