"But she made my life very bright while she was here. I have beautiful things to remember of her; I have very much to be grateful for," she said bravely. "We must not forget to number our blessings, dear Mrs. Ford," she continued gravely, "lest we drift back into the former bitterness and darkness. You still have your lovely daughter, if you have had other trials—I saw her also at the Wardsworths'—be thankful, and, in the light of that and other blessings, forget the wrong and blight of the past."
They went downstairs together, Mrs. Everleigh accompanying her visitor to the door and exacting a promise that she would come again in the near future, for there was more she wished to say to her when the world seemed brighter to her.
Helen went home with a sense of peace in her heart such as she had not known for many weeks. She felt like a different person from what she had been during the last forty-eight hours. She reviewed every step of her interview with Mrs. Everleigh, analyzing her arguments, making a personal application of them, and seeking to attain to a higher understanding of them.
"Loving service for even those who have wronged us most!" This had impressed her more deeply than anything else she had said, and as she conned it o'er and o'er she came to see that to purify her own consciousness of evil-thinking against John—he who had wronged her most, who had put the worst possible humiliation and suffering upon her—would not only release her from the intolerable bondage of mental discord which she had suffered for years whenever he had come into her thought, but would also be obeying the divine command: "Do unto others as ye would they should do unto you."
She might never see or hear from John again—she hoped she would not; he had said he would trouble her no more; but whether he did or not, she knew that the bitterness of hate was past, and in its place there was dawning a peace that comes to all those who realize and practice the greatest of all virtues—"Charity, the love that thinketh no evil."
CHAPTER XVIII.
LOVING SERVICE.
When Helen entered the vestibule to the Grenoble, where she lived, on her return from her visit to Mrs. Everleigh, she found Mrs. Harding, to whom she had sent John the night before, in the vestibule, just about to ring her bell, and knew instantly, from the woman's face, that something had gone wrong.
"What is it?" she inquired, with quickened pulses.
"You sent a man—Mr. Williams—to me last night?"