Emily’s fair cheek took a slight blush-rose tint.  If she felt relieved, this did not appear; perhaps she thought, “Under like circumstances John would speak just so of me.”  The old lady had been silent some moments before Emily answered, and when she did speak she said—­

“What! you and John actually joked about poor Justina in her presence, auntie?”

“Did I see him in her absence?” inquired Miss Christie, excusing herself.  “I tell ye, child, I’ve changed my mind.  John Mortimer’s a world too good for her.  Aye, but he looked grand this morning.”

“Yes,” answered Emily, “but it is a pity he thinks all the women are in love with him!” Then, feeling that she had been unjust, she corrected herself, “No, I mean that he is so keenly aware how many women there are in the neighbourhood who would gladly marry him.”

“Aware!” quoth Miss Christie, instantly taking his part.  “Aware, indeed!  Can he ever go out, or stop at home, that somebody doesn’t try to make him aware!  Small blame to them,” she added with a laugh, “few men can hold their heads higher, either moreally or pheesically, and he has his pockets full of money besides.”

Emily got away from Miss Christie as soon as she could, put on her bonnet, and went into the garden.

The air was soft, and almost oppressively mild, for the bracing east wind was gone, and a tender wooing zephyr was fluttering among the crumbled leaves, and helping them to their expansion.  Before she knew what instinct had taken her there, she found herself standing by the four little gardens, listening to the cheerful dance of the water among the stepping-stones, and looking at the small footsteps of the children, which were printed all over their property.

Yes, there was no mistake about that, her empty heart had taken them in with no thought and no fear of anything that might follow.

Only the other day and her thoughts had been as free as air, there was a sorrowful shadow lying behind her; when she chose, she looked back into it, recalled the confiding trust, and marital pride, and instinctive courage of her late husband, and was sufficiently mistress of her past to muse no more on his unopened mind, and petty ambitions, and small range, of thought.  He was gone to heaven, he could see farther now, and as for these matters, she had hidden them; they were shut down into night and oblivion, with the dust of what had once been a faithful heart.

Fred Walker had been as one short-sighted, who only sees things close at hand, but sees them clearly.

Emily was very long-sighted, but in a vast range of vision are comprehended many things that the keenest eyes cannot wholly define, and some that are confused with their own shadows.

Things near she saw as plainly as he had done, but the wondrous wide distance drew her now and again away from these.  The life of to-day would sometimes spend itself in gazing over the life in her whole day.  Her life, as she felt it, yearning and passioning, would appear to overflow the little cup of its separation, or take reflections from other lives, till it was hardly all itself, so much as a small part of the great whole, God’s immortal child, the wonderful race of mankind, held in the hand of its fashioner, and conscious of some yearning, the ancient yearning towards its source.