“I made the estimate to-day,” returned Edith, “and find that the bills will come to something like a hundred and twenty-five dollars a quarter.”

“Five hundred dollars a year,” said Henry; “and my five hundred added to that will make a thousand.  Can’t we live on a thousand dollars, mother?”

“We may, by the closest economy.”

“Our school will increase,” remarked Edith; and every increase will add to our income.  Oh! it looks so much brighter ahead! and we have so much real comfort in the present!  What a scene of trial have we passed through!”

“How I ever bore up under it is more than I can now tell,” said Mrs. Darlington, with an involuntary shudder.  “And the toil, and suffering, and danger through which we have come!  I cannot be sufficiently thankful that we are safe from the dreadful ordeal, and with so few marks of the fire upon us.”

A silence followed this, in which two hearts, at least, were humbled, yet thankful, in their self-communion—­the hearts of Henry and Miriam.  Through what perilous ways had they come!  How near had they been to shipwreck!

“Poor Mrs. Marion!” said Edith, breaking the silence, at length.  “How often I think of her!  And the thought brings a feeling of condemnation.  Was it right for us to thrust her forth as we did?”

“Can she still be in?”

“Oh no, no!” spoke up Henry, interrupting his mother.  I forgot to tell you that I met her and her husband on the street to-day.”

“Are you certain?”

“Oh yes.”

“Did you speak to them?”

“No.  They saw me, but instantly averted their faces.  Mrs. Marion looked very pale, as if she had been sick.”

“Poor woman!  She has had heart-sickness enough,” said Mrs. Darlington.  “I shall never forgive myself for turning her out of the house.  If I had known where she was going!”

“But we did not know that, mother,” said Edith.

“We knew that she had neither friends nor a home,” replied the mother.  “Ah me! when our own troubles press heavily upon us, we lose our sympathy for others!”

“It was not so in this case,” remarked Edith.  “Deeply did we sympathize with Mrs. Marion.  But we could not bear the weight without going under ourselves.”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Darlington, half to herself.  “We might have kept up with her a little longer.  But I am glad from my heart that her husband has come back.  If he will be kind to his wife, I will forgive all his indebtedness to me.”

A few weeks subsequent to this time, as Miriam sat reading the morning paper, she came upon a brief account of the arrest, in New Orleans, of a “noted gambler,” as it said, named Burton, on the charge of bigamy.  The paper dropped to the floor, and Miriam, with clasped hands and eyes instantly overflowing with tears, looked upward, and murmured her thanks to Heaven.

“What an escape!” fell tremblingly from her lips, as she arose and went to her room to hold communion with her own thoughts.