During the meal Edith had time to observe the young ladies more closely. They were fine-looking, and one or two of them really beautiful. Two of them were in early girlhood yet, and there was not a vestige of the vanity and affectation often seen in those of their position. They evidently had wide diversities of character, and faults, but there were the simplicity and sincerity about them which make the difference between a chaste piece of marble and a painted block of wood. She saw about her a house as rich and costly in its appointments as her own old home had been, but it was not so crowded or pronounced in its furnishing and decoration. There were fewer pictures, but finer ones; and in all matters of art, French taste was not prominent, as had been the case in her home. The next day she sat by unconscious Zell as long as was permitted, and wrote fully to Laura. The dark-eyed girl that seemed dying the day before was gone. "Did she die?" she asked of an attendant. "Yes." "What did they do with her?" "Buried her in Potter's Field." Edith shuddered. "It would have been Zell's end," she thought, "if I hadn't found her, and she had died here alone." That evening Mrs. Hart, as they all sat in her own private parlor, said to her daughters: "Girls, away with you. I can't move a step without stumbling over one of you. You are always crowding into my sanctum, as if there was not an inch of room for you anywhere else. Vanish. I want to talk to Edith." "It's your own fault that we crowd in here, mother," said the eldest. "You are the loadstone that draws us." "I'll get a lot of stones to throw at you and drive you out with," said the old lady, with mock severity. The youngest daughter precipitated herself on her mother's neck, exclaiming: "Wouldn't that be fun, to see jolly old mother throwing stones at us. She would wrap them in eider-down first." "Scamper; the whole bevy of you," said the old lady, laughing; and Edith, with a sigh, contrasted this "mother's room" with the one which she and her sisters shunned as the place where their "teeth were set on edge." "My dear," said Mrs. Hart, her face becoming grave and troubled, "there is one thing in my Christian work that discourages me. We reclaim so few of the poor girls that have gone astray. I understand, from Mrs. Ranger, that your sister was at the Home, but that she left it. How can we accomplish more? We do everything we can for them." "I don't think earthly remedies can meet their case," said Edith, in a low tone. "I agree with you," said Mrs. Hart, earnestly, "but we do give them religious instruction." "I don't think religious instruction is sufficient," Edith answered. "They need a Saviour." "But we do tell them about Jesus."