"Dear Miss Hilary. To-morrow, then, I shall come.
Yours truly, Robert Lyon."
The only scrap of note she had ever received; he always wrote to Johanna; as regularly as ever, or more so, now Ascott was gone; but only to Johanna. She read over the two lines, wondered where she should keep them now that Johanna might not notice them; and then recoiled, as if the secret were a wrong to that dear sister who loved her so well.
"But nothing makes me love her less; nothing ever could. She thinks me quite happy, as I am; and yet—oh, if I did not miss him so!"
And the aching, aching want which sometimes came over began again. Let us not blame her. God made all our human needs. God made love. Not merely affection but actual love—the necessity to seek and find out some other being, not another but the complement of one's self—the "other half," who brings rest and strength for weakness, sympathy in aspiration, and tenderness for tenderness, as no other person ever can. Perhaps, even in marriage, this love is seldom found, and it is possible in all lives to do without it. Johanna had done so. But then she had been young, and was now growing old; and Hilary was only twenty, with a long life before her. Poor child, let us not blame her!
She was not in the least sentimental, her natural disposition inclining her to be more than cheerful, actually gay. She soon recovered herself, and when, a short time after, she stood, scissors in hand, demonstrating how very easy it was to make something out of nothing, her sisters never suspected how very near tears had lately been to those bright eyes, which were always the sunshine of the house.
"You are giving yourself a world of trouble," said Selina. "If I were you, I would just make over the dress to Elizabeth, and let her do what she could with it."
"My dear, I always find I give myself twice the trouble by expecting people to do what they can't do. I have to do it myself afterward. Prove how a child who can't even handle a needle and thread is competent to make a gown for herself, and I shall be most happy to secede in her favor."
"Nay," put in the eldest sister, afraid of a collision of words, "Selina is right; if you do not teach Elizabeth to make her own gowns how can she learn?"
"Johanna, you are the brilliantest of women! and you know you don't like the parlor littered with rags and cuttings. You wish to get rid of me for the evening? Well, I'll go! Hand me the work basket and the bundle, and I'll give my first lesson in dress making to our South Sea Islander."
But Fate stood in the way of Miss Hilary's good intentions.