Her secret lay between her godmother and me. It seemed scarcely worth while to reveal it now, even to Aline. If Harry De Lacy did not return, we said, she would have to live it down, as many another girl before her has had to live down such a trouble. We could do no more to help her--her godmother and I--though either of us would have sacrificed anything in the world for her happiness. We could only wait with our love till she should be able to turn round and find comfort in it. Now, except for the constant silent testimonies of love, it was better to leave her alone, and we left her alone. She came out of her feverish cold slowly and languidly, and looking very thin and pinched. Her godmother was anxious about her, and would have carried her off to a warmer climate, but Esther preferred to stay where she was, and by this we knew that all hope was not dead in her heart. When she got about again at last, in the frosty days before Christmas, it was not to either of us that she first turned for companionship and comfort. Quite unknown to us, she had been friends for some time with Margaret Flaherty, the comfortable wife of a small farmer, who had fostered Harry De Lacy in his delicate babyhood. Now everyone knows that the ties of fosterage are hardly less dear and close than those of maternity itself, and when Harry De Lacy came back to his wretched home at Angry, there had been no heart in all the place to welcome him except the faithful heart of his foster-mother. We were glad when we discovered that Esther had this comfort. Her unhappiness had weighed heavily on her godmother. During that winter our dear old lady's age seemed suddenly to have found her out. Her bright, brisk, merry ways deserted her, and she began to be racked with rheumatism, the result, I suppose, of our damp climate. Yet she would not go away so long as Esther desired to stay; and when we spoke of it, Esther always cried out for a reprieve, as though news were on its way, which would surely arrive the minute she was absent. All the time she was so tender, so loving, so full of compunction over her dear godmother, that we could not be angry with her, or think her selfish. I felt that she was held to the place by bonds which she was powerless to break. Yet she had promised to go in March,--they had a project of spending Easter in Rome,--and with that we had to be content.