seen twice this week. It would be to watch
another woman making a fool of herself to win his favour, and to see him
smile and know it. Oh, this is too miserable, far too humiliating. The
other day, when he came, I cared so little; to-day I could hardly look
him in the face."

Then she considered a little longer, and turned impatiently from her
image in the glass.

"Why, I have known him all my life, and never dreamed of such a thing!
But for that rainy Sunday three weeks ago, I never might have done. Oh,
this must be a mere fancy. While I talked to him I felt that it ought to
be--that it was. Yes, it is."

Her eyes wandered over the lawn. She could see the edges of those little
gardens. She had looked at them of late more often than was prudent.
"Darlings!" she whispered with such a heartsick sigh, "how keenly I
loved them for the sake of my little lost treasure, before ever I
noticed their beautiful likeness to their father--no, that's a mistake.
I say it is--I mean to break away from it. And even if it was none,
after the lesson I have had to-day, it must and shall be a mistake for
ever."

CHAPTER XXV.

THAT RAINY SUNDAY.

"He hath put the world in their hearts."

This is how that had come about which was such a trouble and oppression
to Emily.

Emily was walking to church on a Sunday morning, just three weeks before
John Mortimer's first call upon her.

Her little nephew, Dorothea's child, was four days old. He had spent
many of his new-found hours sleeping in her arms, while she cherished
him with a keen and painful love, full of sweet anguish and unsatisfied
memories.

The tending of this small life, which in some sort was to be a
plenishing for her empty heart, had, however, made her more fully alive
than usual to the loneliness of her lot, and as she walked on through a
fir-wood, in the mild weather, everything seemed also to be more alive,
waking, and going to change. The lights that slanted down were more
significant. The little shaded hollows were more pathetic, but on the
whole it seemed as if the best part of the year was coming on for the
world. It made her heart ache to feel or fancy how glad the world was,
and how the open sky laughed down upon it in helpful sympathy. The old
question presents itself over and over again to be answered,--What is it
that gives us so much joy in looking at earth and air and water?

We love a landscape, but not merely because remoteness makes blue t