Mattie went out of the room--was a long while gone--returned with her eyes red and swollen, as though she had been weeping. The cab at the same time rattled up to the door, and Ann Packet--with red and swollen eyes also, if she could have been seen just then--was heard struggling down-stairs with Mattie's box, which she had not allowed Mattie to touch. "Go and talk to Mr. Sidney again, gal. You mayn't have another chance," she had said, and Mattie had started and glared at her as at a phantom. Surely it was time for her to go, when this faithful but dull-witted woman saw through the veil which she believed had hidden her true heart from every one on earth. But that must be fancy, she thought, and she went back to the room to bid Sidney good-bye, and to check the thanks with which he would have overwhelmed her. "No thanks, sir--only my duty to one whose last thoughts were of your happiness, and how it was best to promote it. _He_ had faith in me, and I have endeavoured to deserve it, as though he had been watching every action of my own from heaven. Good-bye, Mr. Sidney." "Good-bye--best of friends. You will not desert me wholly?--your father is on my side now." "Yes. I shall look in upon you very often, I hope--and you must keep strong, and make up your mind about that business--and--and not think yourself into that low estate ever again. Now I am ready to go." Mattie and her father left the house the former had brightened by her presence. In the cab she struggled for awhile with her forced composure, and then burst forth into irrepressible tears. "Patience, Mattie. I see the end to this. All's well." "You see the end to this? No, you cannot!" "Oh! yes--I can." Mr. Gray uttered not a syllable more during the remainder of the journey; and Mattie, ashamed of her tears, dried her eyes, and asked no further questions. CHAPTER V. ANN PACKET EXPRESSES AN OPINION. Sidney Hinchford knew that he should miss Mattie, and accordingly made up his mind, as he thought, to the loss. But there is no making up one's mind entirely to the absence of those we love, and upon whom we have been dependent, and Sidney found himself no exception to the rule. In great things he had expected to miss her, but in the thousand minor ones, wherein she had reigned dominant without his knowledge, he made no calculation for, and a hundred times a day they suggested the absence of the ruling genius. The house assumed an unnatural and depressing stillness; he felt wholly shut from the world again--no one to whom he could speak, or who, in reply, could assure him that his lot was not worse than other people's, and that there lay before him many methods for its amelioration.