untry house, with sympathizing friends around you,"
continued Sybil, still caressing Rosa's little golden-haired head, and
speaking all the more calmly because of Rosa's excitement, "you will
have repose and leisure to collect your thoughts and to write to your
friends in the old country, and to wait without hurry or anxiety to hear
from them."

"Oh, angels in Heaven, do you hear what this angel on earth is saying to
me! Oh, was ever such divine goodness seen under the sun before! Oh,
dear lady, you amaze, you confound me with your heavenly goodness!"
exclaimed the young stranger, in strong emotion.

Sybil took her hand, and still all the more gently for the increasing
agitation of Rosa, she continued:

"We are daughters of the Divine Father, sisters in one suffering
humanity, and so we should care for each other. At present you are
suffering, and I have some power to comfort you. In the future our
positions may be reversed, and _I_ may be the sufferer and you the
comforter. Who can tell?"

"O, dear lady, Heaven forbid that great heart of yours should ever be
called to suffer, or that you should ever need such poor help as mine.
But this I know: so penetrated am I by your goodness, that, if ever you
should lose your present happiness and my death would restore it, I
would die to give it back to you," fervently exclaimed the stranger.

And for the moment she felt as she had spoken, for she was most
profoundly moved by a magnanimity she had never seen equalled.

Sybil blushed like a child, and found nothing to say in reply to this
excessive praise. She only left her hand in the clasp of the stranger,
who covered it with kisses, and then continued:

"When I first saw your little white card and the delicate tracery of
your name and your kind words, I seemed to know it was a friend's
writing. And when I first saw your sweet face and heard your tender
tones, both so full of heavenly pity, I felt that the good Lord had not
forsaken me, for He had sent one of his holy angels to visit me. Ah,
lady, if you had only come and looked at me so and spoken to me so, and
then passed out and away forever, still, still, that look and that tone
would have remained with me, a comfort and a blessing for all time. But
now--but now to hold out your hands to lead me to a place in your own
home, by your own side--oh, it is too much! too much!"

And tears of many mingled emotions flowed down the speaker's cheeks.

"There, there!" said S