Miss Lucretia said nothing. It was time now for Mrs. Dalrymple to go, and, finishing her second cup of tea, she wished her sister an affectionate good-bye, with the promise of a hamper of game from The Towers, where they were just going to have one of their "big shoots." [Illustration: She had come to the great sacrifice of her life. H V Brock] "Perhaps I might have done it more kindly," Constantia thought, as she drove in her cab to the station. "But it was such a foolish idea. I am glad Lucretia saw it for herself in the end." Miss Lucretia went upstairs with slow, old footsteps, after her sister had gone. The last red glow had faded from her landscape, and everything was grey again, a shade deeper grey now, as it must go on growing deeper, till the night. She went into the little room, and, as she looked at the little bed which was never to hold her child, a tear came up into each of her eyes and trickled down her cheeks. The doll lay on the bed, wrapped up in the white muslin that was to have made its underclothes, looking like a tiny corpse. It seemed to Lucretia like her dream of motherhood as it was now, the dead body of something that had never really lived. She went to the window and looked out on the grey, darkening landscape, and over it there twinkled one faint star. She stood watching, and the star grew brighter, then another came out, and then another. For a long time Lucretia looked up: then she knelt down, looking up still. The far-off light from the stars seemed to be shining on her face as she turned it to Fanny, when that faithful woman came up at last to bring her mistress down to supper. "Miss Amy is going to Mrs. Dalrymple," she said, quietly, and with a little smile. "My sister left it to me to decide whether she should go to The Towers or come here, and I gave her up to them, Fanny. I am glad she is going to my sister. She will be happier there." [Illustration: SOME FAMOUS EASTER HYMNS] There can be no two opinions as to the most famous Easter hymn. In almost every church throughout the land, and in most chapels too, there arises, every Easter morning, the well-known strains of "Jesus Christ is risen to-day, Alleluia!" There may be an occasional difference in the wording of a line here and there, as the hymn appears in various hymnals, but practically it is the one hymn which binds all Christian congregations together on Easter morning. It is our Easter greeting one to another, in the joy and hope of that blessed day, like the greeting of the pious Russian on the same morn, who salutes every passer-by with the words "Christ is risen!" [Illustration: (_Photo: W. and D. Downey, Ebury Street, S.W._) THE REV. S. BARING-GOULD.] [Illustration: (_Facsimile of part of the original manuscript of Mr. Baring-Gould's Easter Hymn._)]