In all that she had to bear, the Divine Master still lived and cared for her. Gradually the very passion of her heart grew to be an absorbing love for Him: an intense desire to do and to suffer His will. This did not mean that doing ceased to be difficult, or suffering to be pain. It meant only that she could say from her heart, thoroughly meaning it: "Thy will, not mine." So passed three years: and through those years Lettice never left Quarrington Cottage. Invitations came from the Farm; and Lettice could not go. The journey meant expense, and she knew too well the opposition which would be aroused in Theodosia if she asked Dr. Bryant's leave. So for his sake, and not to disturb his quiet, she never spoke of these invitations, but smothered down her longings, and quietly declined them all. If her friends counted her neglectful, she could not help it. Nor did she once see Felix. Twice during the three years, Dr. Bryant invited him to the Cottage, and each time Felix refused to come—not too gratefully. Thereafter, for a while, Dr. Bryant let the matter rest. CHAPTER X. AGED NINETEEN. "NINETEEN years old to-day! Will Felix remember?" asked Lettice. She put the question to herself, since nobody was at hand to hear—naturally obtaining no answer. It was betimes in the morning of an early spring day—scarcely 8 A.M., and the air was sharp, through a wealth of sunshine. Beads of dew sent forth prismatic rays from grass-blades, and hung upon linked festoons of spider-silk. Lettice stood upon the wet grass, careless of damp. Three years had drawn her out of a delicate childhood into a healthy and well-balanced girlhood. She was of medium height: the face still small beneath a pale brow; but cheeks and lips were nicely tinged, and the slim figure displayed a wholesome rounded plumpness. Nothing bony or sallow might be seen in her: only tokens of a well-proportioned body and mind in right conditions. Despite all the snubs and worries of her "Cottage" life, she had an eminently placid look, a look of habitual content, better than high spirits. She had managed to possess herself of the "little wayside flower," happiness, which so often fades from the grasp of those who have fullest opportunity for its cultivation. "More than three years since I came here. Have they been long or short?" questioned Lettice, in the half articulate murmur sometimes indulged in by solitary people. After the fashion of a monotonous existence, while days and weeks had often dragged past slowly, years shrank and narrowed under a backward review. "Will the whole of life shrivel up into nothing, when we look on it by-and-by?" she queried. "Or will it open out—broader and fuller—because of the new meanings in everything? I wonder which! Why should one mind so much the little frets, with that lying ahead? And yet—one does mind—" as her memory went to Theodosia. For after all a thorn is a thorn, and while it pierces the flesh, one cannot reason the pain away.