"I did not mean to express any doubt," Esther says, gently, but wearily. "_Suppose_ will not do us much good at the _Last Day_," continues Miss Bessy, rather venomously. "Unless we can lay fast hold upon Jesus" (_laying hold of a roll of paper to exemplify the tenacity of her own grasp_[1]), "unless we have assurance that we are _Elect_, where are we?" "If it is any comfort to you, love, you know that you have our prayers," says Mrs. Brandon, squeezing Esther's hand. "We have set apart a special day with several Christian friends," says Bessy, with animation, "to wrestle in prayer for you, that this searching dispensation may be blessed to your conversion--that you may find the Lord." "Thanks," answers Esther, meekly, too broken-down to resent even the indignity of being set up on a metaphorical stool of repentance, amid a select circle of Miss Bessy's Christian friends. "If we could send you anything from Plas Berwyn--" begins Mrs. Brandon. "Any books or leaflets," interrupts Bessy. "Any eatables, or anything of that kind," amends her mother. "I daresay you have not been thinking much about housekeeping lately, my poor child; and you know whenever you feel inclined to come to us _for good_, you will always find open hearts and open arms," concludes the good old woman, suiting her action to her words, and folding Esther in a black bombazine embrace. "Thank you very much," replies the girl, gratefully, her low, sad voice almost smothered by her mamma-in-law's bonnet strings, amongst which her little disconsolate head is lying _perdue_. "We are only broken cisterns, you should remember, mamma," says Bessy, a little reprovingly of her parent's carnal materialism; "leaky vessels, all of us! You should direct Esther to the one _Ebenezer_." The race of Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite, is by no means extinct: if not in the male line, at all events in the female, it still survives in the person of many a Miss Bessy Brandon. * * * * * Brandon has been busy all day with Jack's lawyer: returning in the afternoon, he finds Esther sitting on the study window-ledge, on which she and Jack used to sit on summer nights, and watch the little feathery, plumy clouds sail along the sky's sapphire sea; used to watch "The large white stars rise one by one," and speculate who lived in them, and what they were made of. Jack has entered into the ranks of the initiated, but she still sits and wonders. "Come out for a stroll, Essie," says the young man, stooping over her till his yellow beard, curly as a bull's forehead, almost touches her dark, drooped head. "If you like," she answers, indifferently; and so drags herself slowly up, and walks away heavily to get ready.