Gerald read the lines mechanically. The two friends sat side by side. Never had Harry’s character shown itself so tender and beautiful as now. He forgot himself in his sorrow for his friend. He said not a word of his own loss; he spoke of Gerald’s. He said his mother was very ill, dangerously ill, but it was her deep desire to see Gerald, if only for a minute, to-morrow. With a true instinct of sympathy he poured out his reminiscences of Ethel’s life, telling how she used to write to him every week when he was at St. Anselm’s, and used often to mention his great friend Gerald Eversley, and ask after him; how the people of Helmsbury loved her, and would do anything for her sake, and could never speak of her since her death without weeping; how she had been delicate even from childhood, and could not bear unkindness or roughness; how fond she had been of all living creatures, and would never hurt any one of them, but treated them (like St. Francis of old, though Harry did not say so) as brothers and sisters, and would not let them be deprived of their native liberty. Poor Harry! he reproached himself bitterly if he had ever acted against her wish. Death makes little disagreements or disobediences seem terrible. Then he went on to tell how she had spoken to him of her love for Gerald, saying with womanly self-forgetfulness that she was unworthy of him--he was so clever, so far above herself--but she would try to make him happy when she was his wife, and to sympathise with his interests and pursuits, and to live for him alone. So Harry Venniker ran on, making talk a duty, not without tears. It may be that no better comforter could have been found--so artless as he was and generous and sympathetic. Yet the comfort was vain. It is thought that Nature contains in herself a remedy for every physical ill to which humanity is heir, though the remedies so often lie hid; but there are spiritual ills for which no remedy exists.