A new life now began for Rachel Gray. Like a plant long bent by adverse winds, she slowly recovered elasticity of spirit, and lightness of heart. What she might have been, but for the gloom of her youth, Rachel never was; but as the dark cloud, which had long hung over her, rolled away, as she could move, speak, eat, and think unquestioned in her little home, a gleam of sunshine, pale but pure, shone over her life with that late-won liberty. Her speech became more free, her smile was more frequent, her whole manner more open and cheerful. Rachel lived, however, both by taste and by long habit, in great retirement, and saw but few people. Indeed, almost her only visitors were Richard Jones and Madame Rose. The little Frenchwoman now and then dropped in, looked piteously at Thomas Gray, shrugged her shoulders, nodded, winked, and did everything to make herself understood, but talk English; and Rachel listened to her, and laughed gaily at the strange speech and strange ways of her little friend. Richard Jones was a still more frequent visitor. He came to receive, not to give sympathy. The society of Rachel Gray was to him a want of his life, for to her alone he could talk of Mary; he spoke and she listened, and in listening gave the best and truest consolation. Now and then, not often, for Rachel felt and knew that such language frequently repeated wearies the ear of weak humanity, she ventured to soothe his grief with such ailments as she could think of. And her favorite one, one which she often applied to herself and her own troubles was: "We receive blessings from the hand of God, shall we not also take sorrow when it pleases Him to inflict it?" "Very true. Miss Gray, very true," humbly assented Richard Jones. Of his present position he never spoke, unless when questioned by Rachel, and when he did so, it was to say that "Saunders and his wife were very kind to him, very kind. And I am quite happy, Miss Gray," he would add, "quite happy." And thus like a hidden stream flowed on the life of Rachel Gray, silent, peaceful and very still. It slept in the shadow of the old grey street, in the quiet shelter of a quiet home, within the narrow circle of plain duties. Prayer, Love, Meditation and Thought graced it daily. It was humble and lowly in the eyes of man; beautiful and lovely in the sight of God. And thus quiet and happy years had passed away, and nothing had arrested their monotonous flow. It was evening, Rachel and her father were alone in the little parlour. Thomas Gray was still a childish old man, bereft of knowledge and of sense. Yet now, as Rachel helped him to his chair, and settled him in it, something, a sort of light seemed to her to pass athwart the old man's face, and linger in his dull eyes. "Father!" she cried, "do you know me?"