pale, suffering form, with scarcely the ability to raise her hand. The
shimmering twilight of the sick-room fell on white napkins, spread over
stands, where constantly appeared new vials, big and little, as the
physician, made his daily visit, and prescribed now this drug and now
that, for a wound that had struck through the soul.

Mary remained many days at the white house, because, to the invalid, no
step, no voice, no hand was like hers. We see her there now, as she sits
in the glimmering by the bed-curtains,--her head a little drooped, as
droops a snowdrop over a grave;--one ray of light from a round hole in
the closed shutters falls on her smooth-parted hair, her small hands are
clasped on her knees, her mouth has lines of sad compression, and in her
eyes are infinite questionings.


CHAPTER XXIV.

When Mrs. Marvyn began to amend, Mary returned to the home cottage, and
resumed the details of her industrious and quiet life.

Between her and her two best friends had fallen a curtain of silence.
The subject that filled all her thoughts could not be named between
them. The Doctor often looked at her pale cheeks and drooping form with
a face of honest sorrow, and heaved deep sighs as she passed; but he did
not find any power within himself by which he could approach her. When
he would speak, and she turned her sad, patient eyes so gently on him,
the words went back again to his heart, and there, taking a second
thought, spread upward wing in prayer.

Mrs. Scudder sometimes came to her room after she was gone to bed, and