Perhaps, even in her cheerful, patient life, there had been hours when she had known the wrongs that had been done her, known how cruelly the world had thwarted her; her very keen insight into whatever was beautiful or helpful may have made her see her own mischance, the blank she had drawn in life, more bitterly.

She did not see it bitterly now.

Death is honest; all things grew clear to her, going down into the valley of the shadow; so, wakening to the consciousness of stifled powers and ungiven happiness, she saw that the fault was not hers, nor His who had appointed her lot; He had helped her to bear it,--bearing worse himself.

She did not say once, "I might have been," but day by day, more surely, "I shall be." There was not a tear on the homely faces turning from her bed, not a tint of colour in the flowers they brought her, not a shiver of light in the ashy sky, that did not make her more sure of that which was to come.

More loving she grew, as she went away from them, the touch of her hand more pitiful, her voice more tender, if such a thing could be,--with a look in her eyes never seen there before.