Cecilia followed her to the piano, and stood by her in her usual attitude of absorbed attention, while Miss Blanchard went through the passage, "He Shall Feed His Flock Like a Shepherd." Neither heard the doorbell ring, and Mr. Chillingworth had quietly opened the door some time before his presence was noticed.
"Thank you," he said, advancing, with a smile, "I wanted to hear that to the end before you knew you had an audience of even one—though I should say two," he added, glancing at the child, whom in her altered dress and surroundings, he did not in the least recognize.
"I was listening, too," said Mrs. Blanchard, rousing herself to greet him, and continuing to her sister-in-law: "Oh, you needn't laugh, Nora, I could hear the music quite well, if my eyes were shut. There's nothing that soothes one so."
"Yes, I know you find it soothing, Sophy, dear," replied Nora, demurely, while Mr. Chillingworth discreetly held his peace. Meantime Cecilia had stolen away, back to the other children, whom the nurse had come to summon to tea. She recognized the clergyman at once, and she instinctively shrank from another encounter with him.
"You have a visitor there, I see," remarked Mr. Chillingworth, as the children disappeared. "What a pretty child she is! She has such lovely eyes. Who is she? Somehow her face seems familiar to me, or else she is like some one I know."
"Oh, I don't think you can have seen her before," said Nora. "She's the child of a poor young woman Will sent to the hospital—the young woman he was sent for to go to see that evening, you know."
"Oh, the one to whom you went to act the Good Samaritan? I meant to ask you how you found her."
"She was very ill indeed," replied Miss Blanchard, gravely; then turning fully round, she looked up at him and exclaimed: "Oh, Mr. Chillingworth, I never could have imagined any one living in such a wretched place! Scarcely any furniture, and the poor thing lying on such a miserable bed on the floor! And she seemed so refined and pretty! It is horrible to think that such things can be!"
Mr. Chillingworth half closed his eyes for a moment, as if to shut out the picture she conjured up. Such scenes always jarred terribly on his æsthetic sense, and on principle, he avoided them as much as possible. They always upset him so, and he could do so little to help!
"Yes, my dear Miss Blanchard, this fleeting life of ours has many mysteries about it, sad and strange enough, but we should only be making ourselves perpetually miserable, if we were always looking at them and trying to solve them. And then you must remember that things often look worse, when we see them from the outside. Human nature has a wonderful way of adapting itself to circumstances, and this life is only a fleeting one, you know. The great thing is—to lead the sufferers to look beyond!"