“Then I'll have her ready,” Mrs. Mayfield promised. “And oh, Paul, I do hope you will impress some of your beautiful thoughts upon her. Religion, faith in God's goodness, and the hope of immortality are absolutely the only sustaining things at such a time. If I had not had them to cling to when my poor husband died I think I should have lost my reason. I doubted at first--I could see no justice in his sufferings and mine; but I have become reconciled. People are more material in their ideas nowadays, and Ethel has come across some injurious books which have influenced her. She is so gentle and sweet--really, it is her pity for Jennie that is causing it all. She is not thinking of herself. That is the state of mind of a mother who has lost a child; she feels, somehow, that her child has been wrongly treated and she resents it.” “I'll do my best to cheer her up to-morrow,” Paul said, a note of despondency creeping into his voice, “though I am afraid I can't do much.” “I am sure you can do far more than any one else,” Mrs. Mayfield said, as she glanced at the window of her daughter's room and turned to go in. “I'll have her ready.” After breakfast the following morning Cato brought the horse and buggy around to the veranda, and Paul went out to see if everything was in readiness for the trip, having received a message at breakfast from Mrs. Mayfield that Ethel was quite willing to go. Presently he heard the two ladies descending the stairs, and a moment later they joined him in the yard. Paul was shocked by Ethel's appearance. She was quite pale and there were despondent shadows under her eyes, but, withal, he had never seen her look so beautiful; it was as if some rare, suppressed radiance were issuing from her hair, skin, and pain-filled eyes, the long lashes of which seemed dipped in the essence of tears. “I know you will think I'm very troublesome, Paul,” she smiled, sadly, as she gave him her hand to get into the buggy. “I've been so despondent that I have avoided all of you. It is very kind of you to bother with me to-day.” “It is certainly a great pleasure to me,” he answered, as he tucked the lap-robe about her feet. “You mustn't try to talk unless you care to.” “It seems to me that I can think of only one subject,” she sighed, as she leaned over the wheel and kissed her mother. “I seem to be floating on a sea of unreality, under clouds of despair. I was looking from the window of my room just now and saw the people going to work at the tannery, and in the fields with their pails and tools, and I wanted to scream. It seemed so queer for them to be moving about as if nothing unusual had happened when”--Her voice failed her. With a sensitive tightening of the lips Mrs. Mayfield signaled Paul to drive on, and he started the horse. They had gone some distance along the stony road which wound gradually up the mountain-side before either of them spoke. It was Ethel who broke the silence.