"I have now done the best I can," she said. "The issue is in God's hands." At the dinner-table she again perplexed the mystified household. They, in their narrow worldliness, had no key to such a problem as Lottie Marsden had become. She was gentleness itself. The mystic tears falling from Divine eyes had melted away all coldness and hardness, and the touch of her words and manner, if we may so speak, had in it a kindliness and a regard for others to which even the most callous respond. Patient self-forgetfulness is the most God-like and the most winning of all the graces. After dinner, Mr. Dimmerly shuffled away by himself, with a sound between a sniffle and his old chuckle, muttering, "I don't believe it's 'stopped,' after all. Anyway, I wish she were going to be a home missionary in my home." Lottie went with Dan again to the pond, and then to the "fallen tree"; but she found no other tryst there than memories, that, in view of what had happened, were very painful. After her return, she no longer shunned the others, but sat down and talked quietly with them, as multitudes of men and women are doing daily, giving no sign that in the mean time they are patiently watching at the sepulchre of a buried hope, which may, or may not, rise again. As with Lottie at first, so with Hemstead, the word false seemed to have the malignant power to quench hope and happiness. If it is faith that saves, it would seem that it is its opposite--distrust--that most quickly destroys. In no way can we deal more fatal and ruinous blows than to deceive those who trust us. And Hemstead felt, at first, that he had been deceived and trifled with in all that was sacred. For hours both faith and reason reeled in passion, that grew and raged in the strong man's breast like a tropical storm. He plunged into the streets, crowded with his unknowing, uncaring fellow-creatures, as he would lose himself in the depths of a lonely forest, and walked hour after hour, he knew not and cared not whither. Two thoughts pursued him like goading phantoms,--she was false--he was deceived. At last, when the frenzy left him, weak and exhausted, he found himself near a large hotel, and he went in and slept almost as the dead sleep. In his case also sleep proved "nature's sweet restorer." In the morning faith and reason sat together on their throne, and he recognized his duty to act the part of a man and a Christian, whatever the truth might be. He sat down at last and calmly tried to disentangle the web. Second thoughts brought wiser judgment, for, after going over every day and hour of his acquaintance with Lottie, he could scarcely resist the conclusion that if she had begun in falsehood she was ending in truth. If she, in all her words and manner, had been only acting, he could never trust his senses again, or be able to distinguish between the hollow and the real.