Old Martha had been many years in Mrs. Wynne's household. She knew Miss Clotilda well—better, probably, than did any one else. She had admired her patience with the old lady, her self-denial and gentleness, and she sympathised almost more than any one in the terrible disappointment. And lately she had begun to feel very unhappy about Miss Clotilda. Since she had come to lose hope, the poor lady had grown listless and low-spirited, so that Martha sometimes almost feared she would fall ill, and not care to get well again.
'I must have deserved it,' she would say sometimes to the old servant. 'I fear I have been selfish—caring too much for my own dear brother, and thinking of nothing else.'
'Oh, miss,' Martha would remonstrate, 'how could you ever think so? I'm sure no lady could have been kinder than yourself to all the poor folk about. You've never been one to turn a deaf ear to anybody's troubles.'
'But in my heart,' said her mistress, 'in my heart my one thought has been David, and that cannot be right, for now it seems as if there was nothing left, now that I can no longer plan for his happiness. I don't know what to do with myself, Martha. I'm getting old, and I am useless; at least, I feel that I shall be useless away from here. I should like to become a sister, and work among the poor, but I am afraid I should not understand it, away from here.'
'Never fear, miss,' Martha would say consolingly. 'A way will show for those as really wishes to do right. You've done what was your duty well till now. I'm sure no lady knows better how to see to a garden or a dairy; and for poultry, miss, you've quite a special calling. Don't you worry, miss.'
And this she would say, though her own heart was sad. She feared she would have to leave Miss Clotilda, and it was hard to think of going to work among strangers at her age. But she was a truly good and faithful-hearted old woman. She believed that, as she said, no one really anxious to do right will ever be left for long at a loss.
Many a night had Martha lain awake, thinking about the lost will. She turned over in her head every possible, or impossible, place in which Mrs. Wynne could have hidden it. More than once, indeed, she had got up in the dark, and lighted a candle to go peeping into some cupboard or drawer which it had struck her had not been thoroughly turned out. But all in vain. And now she, too, like Miss Clotilda herself and the rest of the world, had begun to think all hope was over.
She was very delighted when the boy Neville's first letter came, for of course she was at once told of its contents. And she saw that it brought a light to Miss Clotilda's eyes, and a colour to her cheeks, that had not been there since Mrs. Wynne's death.
