Mrs. Arbuthnot, coming out of her room, found her there like that, standing in the middle of the hall staring. “Now what does she think she sees now?” thought Mrs. Arbuthnot. “We _are_ in God’s hands,” said Mrs. Wilkins, turning to her, speaking with extreme conviction. “Oh!” said Mrs. Arbuthnot quickly, her face, which had been covered with smiles when she came out of her room, falling. “Why, what has happened?” For Mrs. Arbuthnot had woken up with such a delightful feeling of security, of relief, and she did not want to find she had not after all escaped from the need of refuge. She had not even dreamed of Frederick. For the first time for years she had been spared the nightly dream that he was with her, that they were heart to heart, and its miserable awakening. She had slept like a baby, and had woken up confident; she had found there was nothing she wished to say in her morning prayer except Thank you. It was disconcerting to be told she was after all in God’s hands. “I hope nothing has happened?” she asked anxiously. Mrs. Wilkins looked at her a moment, and laughed. “How funny,” she said, kissing her. “What is funny?” asked Mrs. Arbuthnot, her face clearing because Mrs. Wilkins laughed. “We are. This is. Everything. It’s all so wonderful. It’s so funny and so adorable that we should be in it. I daresay when we finally reach heaven—the one they talk about so much—we shan’t find it a bit more beautiful.” Mrs. Arbuthnot relaxed to smiling security again. “Isn’t it divine?” she said. “Were you ever, ever in your life so happy?” asked Mrs. Wilkins, catching her by the arm. “No,” said Mrs. Arbuthnot. Nor had she been; not ever; not even in her first love-days with Frederick. Because always pain had been close at hand in that other happiness, ready to torture with doubts, to torture even with the very excess of her love; while this was the simple happiness of complete harmony with her surroundings, the happiness that asks for nothing, that just accepts, just breathes, just is. “Let’s go and look at that tree close,” said Mrs. Wilkins. “I don’t believe it can only be a tree.” And arm in arm they went along the hall, and their husbands would not have known them their faces were so young with eagerness, and together they stood at the open window, and when their eyes, having feasted on the marvellous pink thing, wandered farther among the beauties of the garden, they saw sitting on the low wall at the east edge of it, gazing out over the bay, her feet in lilies, Lady Caroline. They were astonished. They said nothing in their astonishment, but stood quite still, arm in arm, staring down at her.