Often she thought about Nora, and wondered if she had forgotten to ask the heavenly Father to call her to himself.

She could well be spared from the earth, where no one needed her, and she longed to go.

To tell the truth, Elsli dreaded to look forward.

She did not feel at home in Mrs.Stanhope's house; she had a constant sense of unfitness for the position; yet when she thought of going back to her parents, she knew that there she should be equally out of place.

So the poor child was living a lonely life at beautiful Rosemount, and thinking herself a useless and superfluous being on the face of the earth.
Down along the bank of the river, a narrow foot-path ran for some distance towards a thick clump of willows, in which it disappeared.
Elsli had often followed this path by herself; it was so quiet that she liked it particularly; she never met any one there, for it led only from Mrs.Stanhope's grounds to the willows.