And yet, you who understand the intricacies of the human heart will be able to see how the letter had stung. She did not want to marry him, but she wanted to respect him, to look upon him as a friend; to feel that he cared for her, and not for her father's millions. It was bitter to feel that here was yet another to whom friendship had been only an empty name, and to wonder how many more there were, and because of him to have less faith in the world.
On the whole, I think it was well that at last she cried. They were healthy tears; and helped to wash away some of the bitterness.
THE morning found her her own quiet self. Her first waking thoughts were of Bud, and the first thing she did, after her toilet was made, was to sit down and study her Bible with a view to selecting some verses that she meant to mark for Bud.
All day she went about her many duties with a quiet heart. Even the sting of a false friendship seemed to have been taken away. In the afternoon, she refused to ride with Mr. Ansted, on the plea that she had a music-lesson to give, but when the scholar failed to appear, she, in nowise discomfited, set herself to the answering of the home letters. A long, genial letter to her mother; longer than she had taken time for of late, fuller of detail as to the work that occupied hands and heart.
Something about Bud, his lonely life, his one tender memory, her desire that he might find a Friend who would never fail him; her wish that the mother would remember him when she prayed; her longing to be in a faint sense a helper to him, as her father would surely have been, were he on the earth. "I cannot do for him what papa would," so she wrote, "but Christ can do much more; and it gives me a thrill of joy to remember that he is not only in heaven with papa, but here, watching for Bud."
A detailed account of the last evening's rehearsal, and the new recruits. A hint of her desire to lead this restless Alice into clearer light--if, indeed, the true Light had ever shined into her heart. A word even about Louis Ansted: "Would mamma pray for him, too? It was said that he was in danger from several sources, and he said that his mother was not at all anxious about him. If you were his mother," so she wrote, "you would be anxious. Be a mother to him for Christ's sake, mamma dear, and pray for him, as I am afraid his own mother does not. Still, I ought not to say that, for she is a member of the church, and it may be that her son does not know her heart."