But there was one who lived not far from her, a sister in affliction, about whose sad heart the clouds were gathering thicker and thicker. Spring, with its opening buds and rejoicing birds, brought no gladness to the spirit of Clara Maltby. She was gradually wasting away. Change of air and scene had been recommended, but she would not hear of leaving home, and clung with a distressing tenacity to her round of daily studies, shortening her brief time of exercise, and seeming anxious to goad herself into the attainment of the utmost amount of knowledge which it was possible for her to acquire, grudging every minute as lost and wasted time that was not given to study. To shine had become with her the one absorbing object; to shine, not, alas! for Christ, but for self, for the world, that she might gain the prize of human applause. So she was using the gifts with which God had endowed her, not to his glory, by laying them at the foot of the cross, and employing them as talents with which she was to occupy till the Master came, but as means whereby she might win for herself distinction, and outstrip others in the race for earthly fame. But such a strain on mind and body could not last; the overtaxed faculties would assert their claim for the much-needed rest; and so, in the early spring-time, Clara Maltby was suddenly stricken down and lay for days in a state of half-unconsciousness. At last she rallied, in a measure; and when she was sufficiently recovered to bear conversation, she earnestly begged that she might be allowed to see Thomas Bradly, and have an opportunity of saying a few words to him in the presence of her parents, previously to her being taken from home by her mother to the seaside, to which she had been ordered by her medical man, as soon as she could bear the removal. So one evening, after his work, Bradly, with a sorrowful heart, made his way up to the vicarage, and was introduced by Mr Maltby into the inner room, where his daughter had gathered together her own special library.