"Nurse--tell me! you have been with her the whole time, and know how she feels. Will she ever forgive me? I never, never thought it would be so bad as this. She would not speak to me, would not look at me even." "She wasn't thinking of you at all, my dear, she was thinking of her knee. That is all she can find time to think of just now. The doctors kept it from her as long as they could, but she questioned them, and would not be put off, so they had to tell her the truth. She knows she will be lame, and it has pretty well broken her heart. It's the bread out of her mouth, poor lamb, and she knows it. It will be many a long day before she is herself again." And this was the end of Rhoda's first meeting with Laura Everett after her accident! CHAPTER TWENTY TWO. MRS. CHESTER'S PLAN. It was many days before Rhoda saw Miss Everett again, but, if she was not admitted to the sick room, her mother was a frequent and welcome visitor, and took entire charge of the invalid while the nurse fulfilled her ordinary duties. There was little actual nursing to be done, but the doctors were anxious to prevent solitary repinings, and to do what was possible to raise the spirits of their patient. Evie's own mother had come down for a few days to satisfy herself concerning her daughter's condition, but had been obliged to hurry back to the Vicarage, where the invalid sister was growing worse rather than better, so that her presence could badly be spared. She was a worn, faded edition of Evie, and looked so typical of what the girl herself might now become that Rhoda could not bear to look at her. The two mothers, however, became great friends, for they met with a remembrance of kindness on the one side, and an overwhelming sympathy on the other, and were drawn together by hours of mutual anxiety. In each case the worst dread was unfulfilled, but what remained to be borne required all the fortitude which they could summon. The Vicar's wife saw one of the props of the home disabled for life, and Mrs Chester's kind heart was wrung with anguish at the thought that her child had been the cause of so much suffering. It seemed a strange dispensation of Providence that she, the main object of whose life had been to help her fellow- creatures, should have this burden laid upon her; but she bore it uncomplainingly, striving to cheer the poor woman whose lot was so much harder than her own. Before they parted she broached a scheme which she had been planning in secret, and, having received a willing consent, bided her opportunity to lay it before the invalid herself. It came at last one chilly afternoon, when Evie was laid on a sofa before the fire, as a sign that convalescence had really begun. The knee was still bound up, as it was not proposed that she should attempt to walk until the journey home had been accomplished, and it was on this subject that Evie made her first remark.