of patience as much as lack of money had
brought final failure. The blossom had been gathered and worn with but
small _eclat_, and there was now no hope of fruit.

Full of such sombre thoughts, she turned up the lights and looked at
herself. Gone was her radiant beauty, her splendid youth; gone also
her buoyant spirit and invincible courage. That night as she sat there
alone she buried for ever this hope of a life for which she was not
destined. Yet it was while sitting on that very hearth together Roland
and she had felt the joy of her first triumph at Willis Hall. She
could remember every incident of her return home the night of her
brilliant _debut_. How Roland had praised her and loved her. Neither
of them then thought the temporary success to be the first downward
step from their original grander ideal; the first step toward a
miserable failure. Now it was clear enough. Alas! alas! Why cannot
joy, as well as sorrow, open the eyes? Why are they only washed
clear-seeing with tears?

When the hopeless ceremony was over and she had fully accepted the lot
before her, she rose and with tear-filled eyes looked around the place
of her renunciation. She felt as if her husband ought to have some
consciousness of her disappointment; as if the longing in her heart
should bring him to her side. Where was he? Where had he gone to?
"Roland! Roland!" she whispered, and the silence beat upon her heart
like the blows of a hammer. Was he present? Did he hear her? She felt
until she reached the very rim of conscious feeling, and then? Alas!
nothing but a mighty mystery looming beyond.

Weary and exhausted with emotion, she lay down and slept, and in the
morning the courage born of a resolved mind was with her. When she had
finished her business with Elizabeth, then there was her father and
her mother and her real life again. She must go back and take it up
just where she had thrown it down. And this humiliating duty was all
that her own way had brought her. Never again would she take her
destiny out of the keeping of the good God who orders all things well.
On this resolution she stayed her heart, and somehow in her sleep
there had come to her a conviction that the time of smiles would
surely come back to her once more. For God giveth His children in
their sleep, and the sorrowful wake up comforted, and the weak
strong, because some angel has visited them and "they knew it not."

Elizabeth was quite prepared for her visitor. She