Missy would have given worlds to have been on the other side of the door she had just closed. _Then_ it would be easy to let the tears come that were burning in her eyes, and to throw herself into her mother's arms, and be silently forgiven. But in cold blood to go back, to reopen the conversation, to take back what she had said, to humble herself to ask forgiveness for what was true, but which ought not to have been spoken--this was more than she had grace to do. She longed for the time to come when she should have a sorrow to bear that was not mixed up with repentance for some wrong-doing of her own. This loss of her brother, cruel as it was, would always be made crueller by the recollection of her jealousy of him, of her unkindness to her mother, of the way in which she had rejected her sympathy and taunted her with the share she had had in what had happened. It all seemed insupportable, the wounded love, the separation, the remorse, the jealousy, and the disappointment. What was her life now? St. John was woven into every part of it. What was her work in the parish, with him away; what her home without his presence? The world, she had given up as much as he, she thought; in it she could find no amusement. Study had been but a means to an end; there was nothing left her but duty--duty without peace or pleasure. She had her mother still, but her mother's heart was with St. John. Missy felt that there was a barrier between them which each day's suffering would add to. She should reproach her mother always for having influenced St. John. (She never for a moment altered her judgment of the error that had been made, nor allowed that there might be a side on which she had not looked.) She was certain that her mother would be unable to endure the separation, and that the months, as they wore away, would wear away her life. She would see her mother fading away before her eyes; and St. John, in his new life, leaving his duties to her, would be sustained by his mother's praise, and the approbation of his perverted conscience. She would be cut off from the sympathy of both mother and brother; equally uncongenial to both. She thought of them as infatuated; they thought of her as worldly-minded; she looked down upon their want of wisdom; she knew they looked down upon her unspiritual sordidness. It was all sore and bitter, and as the day dawned upon her sleepless eyes, she thought, with almost a relenting feeling, that if St. John had found peace _anywhere_, he was not to blame for going where it led him. CHAPTER XI. MY DUTY TO MY NEIGHBOR.