"How strange that my brother was not called upon to do that interpreting," said Rosemary, in a musing tone. "He was at that banquet, and he is a man."
Carolina opened her lips to make an incautious reply, but caught herself just in time. A gleam in Rosemary's eyes warned her.
"I see," she said, reddening. "But I must say you baited the hook skilfully."
"I had to, in order to catch you," said Rosemary.
Carolina turned her head on her pillow restlessly.
"Tell me about how you came to accept it," she said, pleadingly.
"Well, I was so abnormally miserable! I had everything in the world I wanted--apparently, yet my home was full of discord. I had only a big, beautiful house. I wanted the love of a certain man. He held aloof while all the others were at my feet. I prayed wildly to my God for help, and He mocked me. Then I grew bitter and vengeful. I vowed that I would have all that life held without God, for it seemed to me, in my vicious interpretation of Him, that every time He saw me poke my head out of my hole, He hit it--"
"Just to show that He could!" cried Carolina, almost with a scream of comprehension.
"Exactly--just to show that He could. Well, then I plunged into a madness I called gaiety, and grew more and more unhappy because I saw that each day I was putting myself further and further from the man I loved. Then, as if to fill my already full cup to overflowing, mamma grew very much worse, so much so that I wanted her to die. I really felt that she had exhausted all that materia medica could do for her, and that death was the only way to end it, both for her and for us. Then I heard of a Christian Science practitioner, named Mrs. Seixas. I went to see her, and, impossible as it may sound, in the first fifteen minutes, I had told her the whole truth, mortifying as it was. But she seemed not only to inspire confidence, but to radiate help. I felt that, although I was a perfect stranger to her, yet she wanted to help me--that she would go out of her way to do it, and that the reason she would do it was because she loved much. I took her to mamma that same day, and mamma's complete healing is so great a marvel that we never can get used to it. Our happiness is almost too much to bear."
Rosemary's eyes filled with tears which rolled down her cheeks. Carolina viewed her with an astonishment that she could ill conceal. Rosemary Goddard to be talking, nay, more, feeling like that! A question was so unmistakably in Carolina's eyes, which her tongue could not gain permission to utter, that Rosemary found herself answering it.