“Oh, how can you bear it?” Tessa knelt on the carpet at her side, with her head on the arm of the chair.
“I could not, at first. I could not now, if I did not love Philip better than I love myself.”
So her sorrow had become Miss Sarepta’s! She drew a long breath, and did not speak.
“Don’t feel so sorry for me, dear. I have known that in the nature of things,—which is but another name for God’s will,—this must come. Even after all the years, it has come suddenly. Will she love my brother?”
“I am sure she will; more and more as the years go on!”
“Every heart must choose for itself,” said Miss Sarepta dreamily, “and the choice of the Lord runs through all our choices.”
Tessa’s lips gave a glad assent.
A letter from Dinah that evening ended thus. “Father is not at all well; I think that he grows weaker every day. To-day he said, ‘Isn’t it almost time for Tessa to come?’”
At noon the next day she was in Dunellen.