“The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshiper shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth.”

She pondered the text.  “Shall worship the Father,” she mused.  “Oh, how sweet!  That august One whom I feared is ‘the Father.’  He loves me!”

She went with her book to the open window and stood, a fair priestess in her white morning dress, and looked out over a portion of her Father’s wide domain.  Oh, how warm and bright the sunlight that lit all things with glory!  How fair were the distant hills beyond the city, with their varied dress of wood and meadow!  In the garden below, how each group of flowers and the green sward answered with joy to the caress of the sun.  How exultantly the lilies stood, and she could catch the incense from the bed of tiny clustering flowers nearest her window.  She lifted her face toward the sky of melting summer blue, and sang softly: 

  “Holy, holy, holy; Lord God Almighty! 
  All Thy works shall praise Thy name,
        in earth and sky and sea;
  Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty;
  God in three persons, blessed Trinity!”

She looked again at the words whose entrance had given light, and read farther:  “For the Father seeketh such to worship Him.”

“He has been seeking me!” she cried, and some glimmering apprehension of the great love of the Father which seeks the fellowship of sincere and simple children, made her bosom heave and her eyes fill with tears, “He loves me,” she repeated as before, and her heart nestled itself in the great truth like a bird that has found its nest.

Presently she looked again from her window and saw Hubert walking in the garden.

“Dear Hubert!” she said to herself.  “I wish he knew.”

With an impulse she laid her book hastily down and ran down the stairs and into the garden.  She flew noiselessly across the soft grass and surprised Hubert from behind, clasping his arm with a cheerful “Good morning!”

He looked down on her glowing face and kissed it.

“How bright you look,” he said.  “Were you up with the birds?  I heard you singing your matins with them.”

“Did you hear me?” said Winifred, with a blush at being overheard.

“Yes.  What makes you so happy, Winnie?”

“Oh, Hubert,” she cried, and she clasped his arm more tightly, “My heart is almost breaking with joy!  I think I have begun—­to know God!”

He looked at her with a surprised hunger in his dark eyes.

“And do you find the knowledge such a joy?” he asked, with deep sadness in his own voice.

“Oh, yes, Hubert,” she said.  “He is so good!”

Later in the day a small breeze swept in the front door of the Gray Mansion, past the maid, up the stairway, and to the door of Winifred’s little sitting-room.  It came with the person of Miss Adele Forrester.

“Hello,” said a bright voice.  “Anybody here?”