"How lovely it looks!" said Mildred. "I think it is the most exquisite view I've ever seen in my life."
Violet gazed thoughtfully at the purple-grey lake lying below them, the encircling woods in all the glory of their summer green seeming richer in contrast with the peaks of the craggy hills behind. By the water's edge stretched lush meadows, the village and the church could be seen in the blue distance, and close at hand rose the turrets and chimneys of The Towers. Violet did not very often think about such things, but just then a verse came into her head which she had sung in the psalms at church the Sunday before, and which had caught her attention at the time--
"The lot is fallen unto me in a fair ground: yea, I have a goodly heritage."
"Yes," she replied with a long breath; "it's the dearest place on earth to me. There's no other like it anywhere. And it's our own, as far as you can see it--that's the best of it! The Lorraines have held it ever since the Conquest. It's Father's, and some day I suppose it will come to me. I can't take the title, but luckily the land is not entailed now. It's grand to think of possessing all this. Mildred, you shall live here with me as long as you like. I want you to enjoy it too. I'm most dreadfully sorry for you. It's hard luck to have absolutely nothing of your own."
Mildred looked down where her cousin's beautiful inheritance lay stretched before her. Her heart was too full to answer. Perhaps for a moment a shade of envy crossed her mind. It was indeed a fortunate lot to be heiress to such broad acres and so old a name. Some of the best things that life could offer had fallen to Violet's share. And what had she herself? An old violin, and the skill to play it--that was all! A possession utterly valueless in Violet's eyes, yet in those of Dr. and Mrs. Graham and the Professor a rare and special talent such as God gives to but very few in this world--a talent to be taken humbly, and rejoiced in, and treasured zealously, and cultivated carefully, and which might bring more joy and beauty into the lives of others than even these glorious woods and waters; for music can lift the soul to the very summit of earthly ecstasy, and in some of its divinest strains we can almost catch an echo of the chorus of the "choir invisible" above. She could not explain--it was quite impossible to put into words what she only felt deep down in her heart; but as she quietly thanked Violet for her offer, it seemed to her that, in spite of her lack of lands, she was not quite portionless. God's gifts to His children were not all alike. To one the estates handed down by a long line of ancestors from the past; to another the genius that has the power to create for itself. Which was the nobler bequest she could not tell, but she knew that after all she, too, had an inheritance.