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.