From that time henceforward into the young woman's dull life there came a little change.

It did not seem a little change to her, but a great one, though to others it would have seemed slight indeed.

She was an affectionate, house-wifely creature, who would have made the best of wives and mothers if it had been so ordained by Fortune, and something of her natural instincts found outlet in the furtive service she paid her sister, who became the empress of her soul.

She darned and patched the tattered hangings with a wonderful neatness, and the hours she spent at work in the chamber were to her almost as sacred as hours spent at religious duty, or as those nuns and novices give to embroidering altar- cloths.

There was a brightness in the room that seemed in no other in the house, and the lingering essences in the air of it were as incense to her.