"Since that unhappy election," said Hester, sighing. "What a strange thing it is that men like you should be no better treated! Here is Mrs Enderby taken out of your hands, and your neighbours suspecting and slandering you, whose commonest words they are not worthy to repeat." "My dear Hester!" said he, in a tone of serious remonstrance. "That is rather a wife-like way of putting the case, to be sure," said Margaret, smiling: "but, in as far as it is true, the matter surely ceases to be strange. Good men do not come into the world to be what the world calls fortunate, but to be something far better. The best men do not use the means to be rich, to be praised by their neighbours, to be out of the way of trouble; and if they will not use the means, it does not become them--nor their wives--to be discouraged at losing their occupation, or being slandered, or suspected as dangerous people." Edward's smile thanked her, and so did her sister's kiss. But Hester looked grave again when she said--"I suppose we shall know, sooner or later, why it is that good people are not to be happy here, and that the more they love one another, the more struggles and sorrows they have to undergo." "Do we not know something of it already?" said Hope, after a pretty long pause. "Is it not to put us off from the too vehement desire of being what we commonly call happy? By the time higher things become more interesting to us than this, we begin to find that it is given to us to put our own happiness under our feet, in reaching forward to something better. We become, by natural consequence, practised in this (forgetful of the things that are behind); and if the practice be painful, what then? We shall not quarrel with it, surely, unless we are willing to exchange what we have gained for money, and praise, and animal spirits, shutting in an abject mind." "Oh, no, no!" said Hester; "but yet there are troubles--" She stopped short on observing Margaret's quivering lip. "There are troubles, I own, which it is difficult to classify and interpret," said her husband. "We can only struggle through them, taking the closest heed to our innocence. But these affairs of ours-- these mistakes of my neighbours--are not of that sort. They are intelligible enough, and need not therefore trouble us much." Hope was right in his suspicion of the accuracy of Margaret's memory. His tones, his words, had sunk deep into her heart--her innocent heart-- in which everything that entered it became safe and pure as itself. "Oh God! my Margaret!" sounded there like music. "What a heart he has!" she thought. "I was very selfish to fancy him reserved; and I am glad to know that my brother loves me so. If it is such a blessing to be his sister, how happy must Hester be--in spite of everything! God has preserved my life, and He has given these two to each other! And, oh, how He has shown me that they love me! I will rouse myself, and try to suffer less."