"When you see Mrs. Des Vœux," she said, "you will know what an angel she is. She has it written in her dear face. She has had such sorrows, Hilda, but they have only made her more heavenly. It is a privilege to be with her, and though she takes occasion many times in the day to send me out, for she is obliged to sit in a darkened room,--she is not altogether blind, you know,--yet I always come back into the shadows with joy. I have nothing to do but read to and write for her; she has many friends, out in the world, as she says, who are always needing her counsel and comfort. Yes, and I have to gather her roses, as Lady A---- said. Wait till you see our roses, Hilda. You will be out of conceit with Rose Hill." "Never!" I cried. "Ah, well!" she laughed, "I suppose immortal roses have grown there for you." Then she told me how Mrs. Des Vœux's only son had died in India. "Her grief," she went on, "has made her profoundly tender and sympathetic to all mothers. She wanted me to have Jacky under the same roof with me, but I was afraid his high spirits might oppress her sometimes. Still, she loves to have him with her now and again, and he behaves sweetly to her; and would you believe it, Hilda, she has offered me the cottage for him and Mary to make their home there? She put it so delicately, that they would keep up the place and save it from going to pieces with damp during the winter. I shall be the happiest woman on earth. Think of this place for Jacky after Parson's Green!" "You accepted, of course?" "I cried with joy. She only suggested it this evening before I came over, and I was already so full of joy at the prospect of seeing you. 'Ask your friend Mrs. Vincent, my dear,' she said in her humble way, 'if she will do me this great favour.' And I just took up her dear old hands and kissed them, and said, 'You shall ask her yourself when she comes this evening, and see what she will say.'" "She will like it, Freda?" "Like it!" cried Freda. "It is what we have dreamt of for our old age! We used to plan that when Jacky was grown up and a successful man, he would make just such provision for us two old ladies. But that it should come while Jacky was still a little boy and dependent on us, with years of his childhood still to come,--we never dreamt of such happiness as that." "You poor dear!" said I, "the Hazeldines ought to have done that for you. It would not have cost them much." "Oh, that reminds me!" said Freda. "Since I came here Lady Hazeldine heard from a friend of Mrs. Des Vœux of me and what I was doing. She wrote me, for her, a really humble letter, saying how shocked she and Sir John had been to learn that their son's widow had had to earn her bread and her child's. She implored me to forgive anything that had occurred between us, and to come to them to live with them, or to make arrangements to live independently as I would. Poor woman, when I read the letter all resentment faded out of my heart.