"Don't you wish you and I could live this way?" she said to Debby Alden, during the second day of the enforced visit. Debby Alden looked at the questioner and then asked, "Are you not satisfied, Hester, with your own little home?"
"Yes, I am!" cried the girl impulsively. "A little house with Aunt Debby is better than a mansion without her. I am really satisfied. Yet it does seem nice to be here. I feel quite at home."
"I presume a lady feels at home in any cultivated environment," was the rejoinder. Debby paused a moment. She was not one to repeat the tales which came to her ears; but when, as in this instance, her sympathies were touched and she felt that her story might bear with it a moral, it might be really worth her while to repeat it to Hester.
"Valehurst is very beautiful, Hester. We recognize that; but it cannot bring happiness to those who dwell in it. Mrs. Vail has a great sorrow. What it is, I do not know. I did not care to inquire. Robert told me that his mother, years ago, had a bereavement from which she has never recovered, and to which she has never become reconciled. The servants speak as though she were a woman saddened by some dreadful experience."
"But Helen says she is very cheerful and can never do enough to make others happy."
"Outwardly, perhaps. From what I have learned, she is one who has strength of character enough to keep her sorrows to herself and not burden others. Of course, she would try to make Helen and every one else happy, even though she were most miserable herself. I would not have spoken of the matter, had I not thought you were estimating one's happiness by the amount of material wealth one possessed.
"Poor Mrs. Vail! I am a happier woman than she. I have just my little home and my girl, but I am very content."
"So am I, Aunt Debby." She pressed Debby Alden's arm closer within her hand. Then she added, "Wasn't it a good thing that I was left to you. Wouldn't it have been dreadful if I had been taken somewhere else and you would have been left alone. Just think how lonely we would have been."
"Yes, it would have been hard; but it didn't happen that way. It was intended that you should be my girl."
"You mustn't think that I was discontented because I wished that you and I lived in a mansion. I am not one bit discontented. I was just wishing."