"I am glad," she said.
Glancing up and seeing the two young faces, aglow with the light of their happiness, she looked back with a wistful amusement on her own doubts and fears of the past weeks.
As she did so, the beautiful, familiar words flashed across her consciousness—
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
* * * * *
Late that night, when the guests had departed and the rest of the household was asleep, Gertrude heard Lucy moving about in the room below, and, throwing on her dressing-gown, went down stairs. She found her sister risen from the table, where she had been writing a letter by the lamp-light.
"Aren't you coming to bed, Lucy? Remember, you have to be up very early."
The shadow of the coming separation, which at first had only seemed to give a more exquisite quality to her happiness, lay on Lucy. She was pale, and her steadfast eyes looked out with the old calm, but with a new intensity, from her face.
"Read this," she said, "it seemed only fair."
Stooping over the table, Gertrude read—