"Cornelius," said Hester, "this illness is the greatest kindness God could show you." "Well, we won't argue about that!--Sis, you must get me out of the scrape!" Hester's heart swelled with delight at the sound of the old loving nursery-word. She turned to him and kissed him. "I will do what I honestly can, Cornelius," she said. "All right!" replied Corney. "What do you mean to do?" "Not to take Amy down with us. She must wait till I have told." "Then my wife is to be received only on sufferance!" he cried. "You can hardly expect to be otherwise received yourself. You have put your wife at no end of disadvantage by making her your wife without the knowledge of your family. For yourself, when a man has taken money not his own; when he has torn the hearts of father and mother with anguish such as neither ever knew before--ah, Corney! if you had seen them as I saw them, you would not now wonder that I tremble at the thought of your meeting. If you have any love for poor Amy, you will not dream of exposing her to the first outbreak of a shocked judgment. I cannot be sure what my mother might think, but my father would take her for your evil genius! It is possible he may refuse to see yourself!" "Then I'm not going. Better stay here and starve!" "If so, I must at once tell Amy what you have done. I will not have the parents on whom you have brought disgrace and misery supposed guilty of cruelty. Amy must know all about it some day, but it ought to come from yourself--not from me. You will never be fit for honest company till for very misery you have told your wife." Hester thought she must not let him fancy things were going back into the old grooves--that his crime would become a thing of no consequence, and pass out of existence, ignored and forgotten. Evil cannot be destroyed without repentance. He was silent as one who had nothing to answer. "So now," said Hester, "will you, or must I, tell Amy that she cannot go home?" He thought for a moment. "I will," he said. Hester left him and sent Amy to him. In a few minutes she returned. She had wept, but was now, though looking very sad, quite self-possessed. "Please, miss," she said--but Hester interrupted her. "You must not call me _miss_, Amy," she said. "You must call me _Hester_. Am I not your sister?" A gleam of joy shot from the girl's eyes, like the sun through red clouds. "Then you have forgiven me!" she cried, and burst into tears. "No, Amy, not that! I should have had to know something to forgive first. You may have been foolish; everybody can't always be wise, though everybody must try to do right. But now we must have time to set things straighter, without doing more mischief, and you mustn't mind staying a little while with Miss Dasomma." "Does she know all about it, miss---Hester?" asked Amy; and as she called her new sister by her name, the blood rushed over her face. "She knows enough not to think unfairly of you, Amy."