"Thank you," she said, with a smile, and her eyes fixed far away on the distance. "I feel like thanking everyone to-night—my whole heart is made up of thanksgiving. You don't know what Osmond is to us girls. We are orphans."
"Ah! indeed!" said Claud, giving a sympathetic intonation to the commonplace words.
"Yes; the loss of him would have been——"
She stopped short, and, after a pause, began to talk fast, as though the relaxed strain of her feelings made it imperative that she should pour out her heart to somebody.
"I had been sitting all the afternoon with my heart full of such ingratitude," she said. "I felt as if all the beauty was gone out of the world, and all the heart out of life. You know
'The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober coloring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality.'
I could not help thinking of that, and of how true it was, as I watched the little red bits of cloud swimming in the blue, and it kept ringing in my head till I thought I must say it out loud—
'Another race has been, and other palms are won.'
I do not want him, my brother, to win his palm yet; I wanted to look at sunsets with him again, and hear him enjoy this beauty as he can enjoy it—so thoroughly. Oh, we are very selfish in wanting to keep people we love on earth, when they might win their palms! But it is only human nature after all, you know; and I do think Osmond's life is a happy one, though it is so full of care."
"I am sure it must be," said Claud, quietly, as he sat down on the grass beside her. "Life is a pleasant thing to every man who is young and has good health, more especially if he has love to brighten his lot. I think your brother a fort right, because you would have thought my denial an empty protestation, designed to make you say it again, with more decision; so I thought it better to let it drop."