The breakfast was a very silent one on Elizabeth's part. Winthrop talked on indifferent subjects; but she was too full- hearted and too sick-hearted to answer him with many words. And when the short meal was ended and he was about quitting the parlour she jumped up and followed him a step or two.
"Mr. Winthrop — won't you say a word of comfort to me before you go? —"
He saw she needed it exceedingly; and came back and sat down on the sofa with her.
"I don't know what to say to you better than this, Miss Elizabeth," he said, turning over again the leaves of his little bible; — "I came to it in the course of my reading this morning; and it comforted me."
He put the book in her hands, but Elizabeth had to clear her eyes more than once from hot tears, before she could read the words to which he directed her.
"And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the daytime from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and from rain."
Elizabeth looked at it.
"But I don't understand it, Mr. Landholm?" she said, raising her eyes to his face.
He said nothing; he took the book from her and turning a few leaves over, put it again in her hands. Elizabeth read; —
"And a man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place; as the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land."