"No: I have heard nothing—but how can that be?—how can you become poor again, unless you lose Mr. Singleton's fortune?"
"That is just what is going to occur—at least everyone thinks so. It is said that Mr. Singleton's son is alive, and that if he chooses to contest the will, it can not stand."
"O Marion! how sorry I am!"—the eloquent eyes said so indeed.—"To think that you should have obtained what you wanted so much, only to lose it at once! That is worse than if you had never possessed it."
"And do you see no retribution in it, Helen?" asked Marion, very gravely. "Did not you, too, want something very much—the happiness that had been promised you all your life,—and did you not lose it through my fault? Believe me, I have thought of this; and, thinking of it, I can make no complaint."
"I am sorry," said Helen, while a shade fell over her face, "that you should speak again of that. I do not look at it quite as you do. Happiness ought not to be our end in life.—I am not very wise, but I know that, because I have faith to tell me so. No doubt I thought of it too much; but even when I felt most about losing it, I was sure that God must know best, and I did not really desire anything which was not according to His will. How could one be so foolish as to do that? For it certainly would not be happiness if it did not have God's blessing on it."
"O Helen! Helen!" exclaimed Marion. It was a cry of mingled wonder and self-scorn. Somehow the simple words touched her more than the most eloquent appeal of any preacher could have done. For it was Helen who spoke,—Helen, who had just learned her wisdom in the hard school of practical experience, and who spoke thus to the person against whom her heart might have been most bitter. "My dear," she went on after a minute, "you are so good that you make me ashamed. I have learned lately—yes, even I—what you lost, and how much you must have suffered in the loss. It was through my own fault and by my own choice that I lost my happiness; but you were blameless as an angel, and yet you talk like an angel about it—"
"No, no," said Helen, quickly; "only like the most ordinary Catholic. And that not without a struggle, Marion. Don't fancy me better than I am."
"I don't fancy: I know you to be like something angelic compared to me," returned Marion, with a sigh. "Do you think that I ever asked myself anything about the will of God? I never even thought of Him in connection with my desires."
"O Marion!"
"It is true. Don't expect me to say anything else; for, with all my faults, I was never a hypocrite, you know. I thought nothing of Him, I asked nothing of Him, and now I have nothing to fall back upon. My happiness, like yours, is gone—with the difference that I was not worthy of it, whereas you were saved from a man who was not worthy of you. And now the money for which I was ready to do anything and sacrifice anything is in jeopardy, and no doubt will soon be gone."