Hardly any need to ask. At the first word he was hastening to the woman and walking away with her. Helen’s eyes, gazing at the sky still, were wet with tears.
“Is it not beautiful, Johnny?”
“Very.” It was a glorious sunset.
“But I never saw it as I see it now. He is teaching me many things. I cannot hope to be ever as he is, Johnny, not half as good; but I think in time he will make me a little like him.”
“You have a happy life before you.”
“Yes—I hope so,” she said hesitatingly. “But sometimes a feeling makes itself heard within me—that one who is so entirely fitted for the next world may not long be left in this.”
II.
It was autumn weather—October. A lot of us were steaming over to Worcester in the train. Miss Whitney from Cheltenham, and a friend of hers—a maiden lady as ancient as herself, one Miss Conaway, of Devonshire—were staying at the Hall. Miss Conaway did not know Worcester, and was now being taken to see it—especially the cathedral. Lady Whitney, Helen, Anna, and I made up the party, and we filled the carriage. My being with them arose from chance: I had come over accidentally that morning to Whitney Hall. Of course Helen hoped to see something besides the cathedral her curate. For in June Mr. Leafchild, then in priest’s orders, entered on his new curacy at Worcester, there to stay until the expected living should fall in.
“How is he?” I asked Helen, bending over the arm of the seat that divided us.
“Working himself to death,” she whispered back to me, her tone a cross one.