Without the hope of helping in the highest sense, Mary could not have taken up her abode in such a house as Mrs.Redmain's.

No outward service of any kind, even to the sick, was to her service enough to _choose_; were it laid upon her, she would hasten to it; for necessity is the push, gentle or strong, as the man is more or less obedient, by which God sends him into the path he would have him take.
But to help to the birth of a beautiful Psyche, enveloped all in the gummy cerecloths of its chrysalis, not yet aware, even, that it must get out of them, and spread great wings to the sunny wind of God--that was a thing for which the holiest of saints might well take a servant's place--the thing for which the Lord of life had done it before him.

To help out such a lovely sister--how Hesper would have drawn herself up at the word! it is mine, not Mary's--as she would be when no longer holden of death, but her real self, the self God meant her to be when he began making her, would indeed be a thing worth having lived for! Between the ordinarily benevolent woman and Mary Marston, there was about as great a difference as between the fashionable church-goer and Catherine of Siena.

She would be Hesper's servant that she might gain Hesper.

I would not have her therefore wondered at as a marvel of humility.