"Lydia, that was Mercy's voice I heard just now in the passage." "Mercy is dead," answered Lydia, contracting her brows in pain. "But, Lydia, I _did_ hear her voice." "She is dead, Mistress Bell. That was another child." "Another child! Let me see the other child." Lydia was obliged to call in Cecile, who came forward with a sweet grave face, and stood gently by the little tremulous old woman, and took her hand, and then stooped down to kiss her. Cecile was interested in such great age, and kept saying to herself, "Perhaps my grandmother away in the Pyrenees is like this very old woman," and when Mrs. Bell warmly returned her soft little caress, Cecile wondered to herself if this was like the mother's kiss her father and told her of when he was dying. But when Cecile had gone away, Mrs. Bell turned to Lydia and said in a tone of satisfaction: "How much our dear Mercy has grown." After this nothing would ever get the idea out of the old lady's head that Cecile was Mercy. CHAPTER VII. A GUIDE TO THE PYRENEES. I have said, for the first two months of Cecile's life in the country she was a happy and light-hearted child. Her purse of money was safe for the present. Her promise lay in abeyance. Even her dead step-mother, anxious as she was to have Lovedy found, had counseled Cecile to delay her search until she was older. Cecile, therefore, might be happy. She might be indeed what she was--a child of ten. This happiness was not to last. Clouds were to darken the life of this little one; but before the clouds and darkness came, she was to possess a more solid happiness--a happiness that, once it found entrance into such a heart as hers, could never go away again. The first beginning of this happiness was to come to Cecile through an unexpected source--even through the ministrations of an old, partly blind, and half-simple woman. Mrs. Bell from the first took a fancy to Cecile, and liked to have her about her. She called her Mercy, and Cecile grew accustomed to the name and answered to it. This delusion on the part of poor old Mrs. Bell was great torture to Lydia Purcell, and when the child and the old woman were together she always left them alone. One afternoon Mrs. Bell said abruptly: "Mercy, I thought--or was it a dream?--I thought you were safe away with Jesus for the last few years." "No, Mistress Bell," answered Cecile in her slow and grave tones, "I've only been in London these last few years." "Now you're puzzling me," said Mrs. Bell in a querulous voice, "and you know I hate being puzzled. Lydia Purcell, too, often puzzles me lately, but you, Mercy, never used to. Sit down, child, and stitch at your sampler, and I'll get accustomed to the sight of you, and not believe that you've been away with my blessed Master, as I used to dream." "Is your blessed Master the same as Jesus that you thought I had gone to live with?" asked Cecile, as she pulled out the faded sampler and tried to work the stitches.