tears. An awful purpose
had arisen in her mind, under the pressure of that great agony. Heavens,
how she loved that man! To be suspected by him was torture. But she
could bear that. It was her cross; she could carry it, lie down on it,
and endure: but wrong him she could not--would not! It was sinful enough
while he was there; but doubly, unbearably sinful, when he was going to
a foreign country, when he would need every farthing he had. So not for
her own sake, but for his, she spoke to her mother when she went home,
and found her sitting over her Bible in the little parlour, vainly
trying to find a text which suited her distemper.

"Mother, you have the Bible before you there."

"Yes, child! Why? What?" asked she, looking up uneasily.

Grace fixed her eyes on the ground. She could not look her mother in the
face.

"Do you ever read the thirty-second Psalm, mother?"

"Which? Why not, child?"

"Let us read it together then, now."

And Grace, taking up her own Bible, sat quietly down and read, as none
in that parish save she could read:

"Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, and whose sin is
covered.

"Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in
whose spirit there is no guile.

"When I kept silence, my bones waxed old, through my groaning all the
day long.

"For day and night Thy hand was heavy upon me; my moisture is turned to
the drought of summer.

"I acknowledge my sin unto Thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid.

"I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and Thou
forgavest the iniquity of my sin."

Grace stopped, choked with tears which the pathos of her own voice had
called up. She looked at her mother. There were no tears in her eyes:
only a dull thwart look of terror and suspicion. The shaft, however
bravely and cunningly sped, had missed its mark.

Poor Grace! Her usual eloquence utterly failed her, as most things do in
which one is wont to trust, before the pressure of a real and horrible
evil. She had no heart to make fine sentences, to preach a brilliant
sermon of commonplaces. What could she say that her mother had not known
long before she was born? And throwing herself on her knees at her
mother's feet, she grasped both her hands and looked into her face
imploringly,--"Mother! mother! mother!" was all that she could say: but
their tone meant more than all words.--Reproof, counsel, comfort, utter
tenderness, and under-current of clear dee