From the Martha of the old faith, so careful and troubled about many things--sins and penances, creeds and sacraments, the miraculous hauntings of words and objects, of water and wafer, of fragments of bone and stuff, of scapulars and medals, of crucifixes and indulgences--her mind turned to this Mary of a tameless and patient nature, listening and loving in the sunlight. Only, indeed, to destroy her own fancy as soon as woven! Nature was pain and combat, too, no less than Faith. But here, at least, was no jealous lesson to be learnt; no exclusions, no conditions. Her rivers were deep and clear for all; her "generous sun" was lit for all. What she promised she gave. Without any preliminary _credo_, her colours glowed, her breezes blew for the unhappy. Oh! such a purple shadow on the fells--such a red glory of the oak twigs in front of it--such a white sparkle of the Greet, parting the valley! What need of any other sacrament or sign than these--this beauty and bounty of the continuing world? Indeed, Friedland had once said to her, "The joy that Catholics feel in the sacrament, the plain believer in God will get day by day out of the simplest things--out of a gleam on the hills--a purple in the distance--a light on the river; still more out of any tender or heroic action." She thought very wistfully of her old friend and his talk; but here also with a strange sense of distance, of independence. How the river dashed and raced! There had been wild nights of rain amid this May beauty, and the stream was high. Day by day, of late, she had made it her comrade. Whenever she left Augustina it was always to wander beside it, or to sit above it, cradled and lost in that full triumphant song it went uttering to the spring. * * * * * But there was a third person in the play, by no means so passive an actor as Laura was wont to imagine her. There is often a marvellous education in such a tedious parting with the world as Augustina was enduring. If the physical conditions allow it, the soul of the feeblest will acquire a new dignity, and perceptions more to the point. As she lay looking at the persons who surrounded her, Augustina passed without an effort, and yet wonderfully, as it seemed to her, into a new stage of thought and desire about them. A fresh, an eager ambition sprang up in her, partly of the woman, partly of the believer. She had been blind; now she saw. She felt the power of her weakness, and she would seize it. Meanwhile, she made a rally which astonished all the doctors. Towards the end of the second week in May she had recovered strength so far that on several occasions she was carried down the chapel passage to the garden, and placed in a sheltered corner of the beech hedge, where she could see the bright turf of the bowling-green and the distant trees of the "Wilderness."