“Are you tired, my dear?” asked Miss Letty gently.
“Yes, I think I am. It is warm, isn’t it? Oh dear, Miss Letty, you do look so sweet! Were you always as good as you are now?”
Miss Letty laid down her embroidery and smiled at this question.
“Good? My dear child, I’m not good! I am just as I always was—a woman—getting to be a very old one now—full of faults and failings. What makes you ask me such a funny question?”
“I don’t know!” and Violet bit the ribbon of her hat spasmodically—“My own Miss Letty! Were you ever in love?”
The gentle lady started, and her delicate hands trembled, as she quietly took up her work and resumed her stitching.
“Yes, Violet,” she answered softly—“And what you will say is more extraordinary, I am in love still!”
“He is dead?” queried Violet timidly.
“Yes. He is dead, so far as this world goes—but he is alive for me in Heaven. And I shall meet him—soon!”
She raised her patient sweet eyes for a moment—and their expression was so heavenly—the youth and beauty of the past was so earnestly reflected in their clear depths, that Violet almost forgot it was an old face in which these orbs of constancy were set.