"Is he blind?" the boy would ask of a new acquaintance. "Can _he_ see, too? _Everyone_ can see but me! ... _I_ want to run about like the other fellows, and play cricket, and have some fun. It's dull all alone in the dark. Can't you have me made better, father?" At times he would cry; piteous, pitiful tears, but the sensitive ear was quick to catch the distress in his father's voice, and he would offer consolation in the midst of his grief. "Don't be sorry, father. I don't want you to be sorry. It doesn't matter; really it doesn't. I have a ripping time!" Never for a moment did the boy hold his parents responsible for his infirmity; but there came a day when he blamed his God. "If God can do everything He likes, He could have made me quite right, and well. Why didn't He, father?" "I don't know, my son." "_You_ would make me better if you could! You said yourself you'd pay the doctor all your money. You are kinder than Him. I don't think God _is_ kind to me, father. It would have been so easy for Him--" The wisdom for which Francis had prayed and struggled seemed a poor thing at that moment. He was dumb, and yet he dared not be dumb. "Frankie," he said, "I'll tell you a secret--a secret between you and me... God sent me a great many blessings when I was young, and they did me no good. I was selfish, and careless, and blind, too, Frankie, though my eyes could see, and then after He had tried me with happiness and it had failed, He sent me"--the man's voice trembled ominously--"_a great grief_! ... Frankie, old man, when I come to die, I believe I am going to thank God for that grief, more than for all the blessings which went before." The child sat silent, struggling for comprehension. "What did the great grief _do_ to you, father?" Francis paused for a moment, struggling for composure. Then he spoke: "_It stabbed my dead heart wide awake_!" He stooped and kissed the child's blind eyes. CHAPTER SEVEN. THE GIRL WHO ASKED FOR HAPPINESS. Fate is a sorry trickster, and a study of life leads one to the conclusion that the less that is asked of her the less does she bestow. Meriel, on her part, had made few demands--riches and power had for her no allure; her highest ambition was to attain that quiet domestic happiness enjoyed by thousands of her sister women. She wanted to be loved and to love in return; to transform some trivial villa into a home, and reign therein over her little kingdom; and on her twenty-eighth birthday fate had so wrought the tangled skein that she found herself in the position of unpaid attendant to an old school friend, while her heart was racked by a hopeless passion for the same friend's husband.