"My dear, it is quite true," said Alice quietly, and with another sigh: "I could not tell for a long time what it was that made him so overcast and moody, and neither could my young lady. It could not be Mr. Brian, for Mr. Brian gave her up in the kindest and quietest way; you could not have believed how glad he was to sacrifice himself to his brother--and went away to the West Indies where your grandmamma had an estate, to look after the poor people there; so then the marriage was over very soon, and your grandpapa Southcote took the young people home to live with him at Cottiswoode, and any one that knew how fond he was of Miss Helen, would have thought Mr. Howard had got all the desire of his heart. But he had not, Miss Hester! The heart of man is never satisfied, the Bible says--and I have often seen your papa's face look as black and miserable after he was married, as when he used to sit watching Mr. Brian and my poor dear young lady. Your mamma did not know what to think of it, but she always hung about him with loving ways and was patient, and drooped, and pined away till my heart was broken to look at her. Then she revived all at once, and there was more life in the house for a little while--she had found out what ailed him: but oh! Miss Hester, a poor woman may set her life on the stake to change a perverse fancy, and never shake it till she dies. Your papa had got it into his head that my young lady had married him out of _pity_; and all her pretty ways, and her love, and kindnesses, he thought them all an imposition, my dear--and that is the reason why he says that hard, cruel saying, 'Pity is a cheat!'" "And then, Alice?" said I, eagerly. "And then? there was very little more, Miss Hester--she was hurried out of this world when you were born; she had never time to say a word to him, and went away with that bitterness in her heart, that the man she had left father and mother for, never understood her. Death tries faith, my dear, though you know nothing of it! think how I stood looking at her white face in her last rest! Thinking of her life and her youth, and that this was the end of all; so carefully as she had been trained and guarded from a child, and all her education and her books, and such hopes as there were of what she would be when she grew up a woman; but soon I saw that she grew up only to die--God never changes, Miss Hester--he tries a poor woman like me very like the way he tried Abraham--and that was what I call a fiery passage for faith!" "And my mother, Alice? and poor, poor papa! oh! how did he ever live after it?" cried I, through my tears. "He lived because it was the will of God--as we all do," said Alice, "a sad man, and a lonely he is to this day: and will never get comfort in his heart for the wrong he did my dear young lady--never till he meets her in heaven."