Mildly quiet and decided Mrs. Powle's letter was; very decided, and so cool as to give every assurance the decision would be persisted in. Eleanor felt this very much. She kept on her usual way of life without any variation; but the radiant bright look of her face was permanently saddened. She was just as sweet and companionable an assistant to her aunt as ever; but from month to month Mrs. Caxton saw that a shadow lay deep upon her heart. No shadow could have less of anything like hard edges.
They had been sitting at work one night late in the winter, those two, the aunt and the niece; and having at last put up her work Eleanor sat gravely poring into the red coals on the hearth; those thought-provoking, life-stirring, strange things, glowing and sparkling between life and death like ourselves. Eleanor's face was very sober.
"Aunt Caxton," she said at length,—"my life seems such a confusion to me!"
"So everything seems that we do not understand," Mrs. Caxton said.
"But is it not, aunty? I seem taken from everything that I ought most naturally to do—papa, Julia, mamma. I feel like a banished person, I suppose; only I have the strange feeling of being banished from my place in the world."
"What do you think of such a life as Mr. Rhys is leading?"
"I think it is straight, and beautiful,"—Eleanor answered, looking still into the fire. "Nothing can be further from confusion. He is in his place."
"He is in a sort of banishment, however."
"Not from that! And it is voluntary banishment—for his Master's sake. That is not sorrowful, aunt Caxton."
"Not when the Lord's banished ones make their home in him. And I do not doubt but Mr. Rhys does that."