Other some will say, "Must I weigh my words with my familiar friend as if I had been but that moment presented to him?" I answer, It were small labor well spent to see that your coarse-grained evil self, doomed to perdition, shall not come between your friend and your true, noble, humble self, fore-ordained to eternal life. The Father cannot bear rudeness in his children any more than wrong:--my comparison is unfit, for rudeness is a great and profound wrong, and that to the noblest part of the human being, while a mere show of indifference is sometimes almost as bad as the rudest words. And these are of those faults of which the more guilty a man is, the less is he conscious of the same. Vavasor did not move the deepest in Hester. How should he? With that deepest he had no developed relation. There were worlds of thought and feeling already in motion in Hester's universe, while the vaporous mass in him had hardly yet begun to stir. To use another simile, he was living on the surface of his being, the more exposed to earthquake and volcanic eruption that he had never yet suspected the existence of the depths profound whence they rise, while she was already a discoverer in the abysses of the nature gradually yet swiftly unfolding in her--every discovery attended with fresh light for the will, and a new sense of power in the consciousness. When Vavasor was gone she turned with greater diligence to her musical studies. Amy Amber continued devoted to her, and when she was practicing would hover about her as often and as long as she could. Her singing especially seemed to enchant and fascinate the girl. But a change had already begun to show itself in her. The shadow of an unseen cloud was occasionally visible on her forehead, and unmistakable pools were left in her eyes by the ebb-tide of tears. In her service, notwithstanding, she was nowise less willing, scarcely less cheerful. The signs of her discomfort grew deeper, and showed themselves oftener as the days went on. She moved about her work with less elasticity, and her smile did not come so quickly. Both Hester and her mother saw the change, and marked even an occasional frown. In the morning, when she was always the first up, she was generally cheerful, but as the day passed the clouds came. Happily, however, her diligence did not relax. Sound in health, and by nature as active as cheerful, she took a positive delight in work. Doing was to her as natural as singing to the birds. In a household with truth at the heart of it she would have been invaluable, and happy as the day was long. As it was, she was growing daily less and less happy. One night she appeared in Hester's room as usual before going to bed. The small, neat face had lost for the time a great part of its beauty, and was dark as a little thunder-cloud. Its black, shadowy brows were drawn together over its luminous black eyes; its red lips were large and pouting, and their likeness to a rosebud gone.