ed I have
been hitherto! Little did I imagine that the very longing and craving
of my heart for it, would thereby prevent my possessing it!"

'She leaves the cavern, and returns to her home a wiser woman.'

Gwen folded her manuscript up quietly, adding indifferently, 'Now what
was it she wanted?'

'I should say, "Work,"' remarked Agatha in her matter-of-fact way.
'She seems to have been a most idle young person.'

'Rest and contentment,' murmured Clare, looking at Gwen with dreamy,
thoughtful eyes.

'Sleep, perhaps,' suggested Elfie.

'You're all wrong.'

'Tell us then.'

'She wanted silence.'

And humming an air, Gwen walked into the house without another word.

Elfie began to laugh. 'What a queer subject! Gwen never does write
like other people. There is no moral at all.'

Neither of the others spoke for a little. Then Agatha said, folding up
her work, 'It may take in certain magazines, but I think she writes far
better when she keeps to facts, not fancies.'

'It has a moral,' said Clare, looking away over the meadows.

'What is it?' asked Elfie, regarding her curiously.

'Failure is in self, not circumstances!'

After which slow denunciation, Clare also moved into the house, and
when she reached her bedroom she murmured to herself, 'And I know all
my unrest and discontent come from within me. It is not my
surroundings. Miss Villars must be right.'

CHAPTER VIII

Entertaining a Stranger

'In all things
Mindful not of _herself, but bearing_ the burden
of others.'--_Longfellow._

It was Sunday evening. Agatha sat by the drawing-room window, her
Bible on her lap, and her thoughts far away from things of earth. All
the rest of the household were at church, and she was enjoying the
stillness around her. The sun was setting just behind the pine trees
in the distance, and shedding a rosy glow upon their slender stems; the
hush of night seemed to be falling on all Nature, and Agatha was so
wrapped up in her thoughts, that she did not notice the figure of a man
quietly and swiftly approaching the house. She was the more startled
when a voice broke upon the stillness; and she looked up to see a man
standing close outside the window.

'Pardon me, madam, but will you kindly allow me to enter? I wish to
have a few words with you.'

Visions of housebreakers, robbing, and perhaps murdering, if their
wishes were denied them, flitted through Agatha's perturbed mind. She