“Tell me first, Rachel, of your own matter.  Is it any trouble,—­any grief or pain?”

Rachel had quite forgot.  The real trouble of it was this perplexity that she had told.  The rest of it—­that she knew was all right.  She would not call it trouble—­that which she simply had to wait and bear; but that in which she had to do, and knew not just how to “go rightly about,”—­it was that she felt as the disquiet.

She smiled, and laid her hand upon her breast.

“The doctor calls it trouble—­trouble here.  But it may be helped; and there is a man in Philadelphia who treats such ailments with great skill.  My cousin-in-law, Lydia Froke, will receive me at her house for this winter, if I will come and try what he can do.  Thee sees:  I suppose I ought to go.”

“And Desire knows nothing?”

“How could I tell the child, until I saw my way?  Now, can thee think?”

Rachel Froke repeated her simple question with an earnestness as if nothing were between them at this moment but the one thing to care for and provide.  She waited for no word of personal pity or sympathy to come first.  She had grown quite used to this fact that she had faced for herself, and scarcely remembered that it must be a pain to Miss Kirkbright for her sake to hear it.

It was hard even for Miss Kirkbright to feel it at once as a fact, looking in the fair, placid, smiling face that spoke of neither complaint nor pain nor fear; though a thrill had gone through her at the first word and gesture which conveyed the terrible perception, and had made her pale and grave.

“Must it be a servant to do mere servant’s work; or could some nice young person, under Frendely’s direction, relieve her of the actual care that you have taken, and keep things in the kitchen as they are?”

“That is precisely the best thing, if we could be sure,” said Rachel.

“Then I think perhaps I came here with an errand straight to you, though I had no knowledge of it in coming,” said Miss Kirkbright.

“That looks like the Lord’s leading,” said Rachel Froke.  “There is always some sign to believe by.”

Miss Euphrasia took out Sylvie’s letter, as the best way of telling the story, and put it into Rachel Froke’s hand.  She did not feel it any breach of confidence to do so.  Breach of confidence is letting strange air in upon a tender matter.  The self-same atmosphere, the self-same temperature,—­these do not harm or change anything.  It is only widening graciously that which the confidence came for, to let it touch a heart tuned to the celestial key, ready with the same response of understanding.  There are friends one can trust with one’s self so; sure that only by true and inward channels the word, the thought, shall pass.  Gossip—­betrayal—­sends from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth; tosses about our sacredness, or the misinterpreted sign of it, on the careless surface.  From heart to heart it may be given without disloyalty.  That is the way God Himself works round for us.