She walked on rapidly without another word, and Peggy stood staring after her.
"Oh my! She is a nice lady. I do hopes she will be better soon."
She was very interested a few days afterwards when she heard that the Miss Churchhills were going to call on Mrs. Webster's lodger, and she ventured to ask Helen when she came back if she had seen her.
"Yes, I have, Peggy. I have discovered that my father knew her some years ago. She used to be one of his Sunday school teachers. Then she married, and has had a lot of trouble since. She has come into the country to recruit her health."
Helen did not tell Peggy Mrs. Dale's history. It was a pitiable one. She was tempted to marry a man she did not love, for the sake of a home. Her husband proved to be an atheist and a drunkard; he led her a miserable life. Three out of her four children died in their infancy. Her only boy began to develop a taste for drink when he was only fourteen, and was expelled from two different schools. She took him abroad, and more to her relief than grief, he died of a rapid decline when he was seventeen. Then she came back to her husband, and had now only been a widow for a few months.
She said to Helen very sadly—
"My life seems finished, for all that makes life pleasant has gone from me. I have no belongings, no religion, no hope; I bury myself in books, but they are beginning to weary me."
"There is never an end of anything," said Helen softly. "Life is made up of continual fresh beginnings, is it not?"
"Ah, that is talk—a mere platitude," Mrs. Dale said a little impatiently. "I can never make a beginning."
"But out of chaos God can."