‘Yes, the hours seem very long. I make one of the girls sit here at her needlework. But that’s almost worse than loneliness, to hear the click, click, click of the needle, and see the girl sitting there, with no more sense in her than a statue, or not so much, for a statue does no harm. And then one gets thinking of the past, and the things we have done which we ought not to have done, and the things left undone which we ought to have done. It’s a dreary thought. When I was well and strong, and able to bustle about the house, I used to think I had done my duty in that state of life to which it had pleased God to call me. I knew that I had never spared myself, or given myself up to the lusts of the flesh, such as eating, and drinking, and slothfulness. The hardest crust or the poorest bit off the joint was always good enough for me. I was always the first up of a morning, summer and winter, and my hands were never idle. But since I’ve been ill, and sitting here all day, I’ve come to think myself a sinner. That’s a hard thought, Mr. Clissold, after a life of care and labour.’ ‘Perhaps it is the best thought any of us can have,’ he answered, ‘the natural conclusion of every Christian who considers how far his highest endeavours fall short of his Master’s divine example. Remember the story of the publican.’ And then he read that sublimely simple record of the two men who went up into the temple to pray. He had hardly finished when Mrs. Trevanard burst into tears, the first he had ever seen her shed. The sight shocked him, and yet inspired hope. ‘I have been like the Pharisee, I have trusted in my own righteousness,’ she said at last, drying her tears. ‘Dear Mrs. Trevanard,’ Maurice began, earnestly, ‘there are few of us altogether blameless—there are few lives in which some wrong has not been done to others—some mistake made which, perhaps, has gone far to wreck the happiness of others. The uttermost we can do, the uttermost God will demand from us, is repentance and atonement—such poor atonement, at least, as we may be able to offer for the wrong we have done. But it is a bitter thing to outstand God’s hour, and hold by our wrong-doing, to appear before Him as obstinate sinners who know their sin, yet cleave to it.’ The words moved her, for she turned her face away from him, and buried it on her pillow. He could see the feeble frame shaken by stifled sobs. ‘If you have wronged any one, and seek to atone for that wrong now in this eleventh hour——’ said Maurice. Mrs. Trevanard turned quickly round, interrupting him. ‘Eleventh hour,’ she repeated. ‘Then they have all made up their minds that I am to die?’ ‘Indeed, no! Your husband and son, and all about you, most earnestly desire your recovery. But you have been so long suffering from this trying disease, without improvement, that a natural fear has arisen——’ ‘They are right,’ she said, with a gloomy look. ‘I feel that my doom is upon me.’