"You will go now," he said, "all of you, because the Mistress must have rest and peace to recover her strength." So they went, and Patience was taken up-stairs and put to bed in the sweet lavender-scented sheets, with open windows looking out over the moors; and as she lay there it seemed to her as if the past were an ugly dream from which she had just awakened. As she listened to the birds singing, and the voices of Agnes and Jessie as they went and came, she buried her face in the pillow and wept tears of gladness and thanksgiving. All the bitterness of her soul for those dark years of mourning passed away. Her youth had departed from her, but it seemed to her almost as if there were a resurrection within her, a new life dawning, a life which did not belong to others, as all her past had done, but to herself. A strange gladness, a sense of peace, crept over her, and she fell asleep.
What would her awakening be? None but God knew. Surely she was one of God's elect; she had possessed her soul in patience.
In a different way Agnes realized the same feeling. It was not likely she would ever forget what she had gone through or what she had seen and heard, but it grew to be almost like a dream from which she had awakened. She had been away from home and she had come back again, and as she linked her arm in Jessie's, and with Mr. Ewan walked back to the vicarage, she said as much.
"I hope I may never go back to London," she said. "I will stay here all my life. Could anything be more lovely?"
"Make no rash promises," said Mr. Ewan, laughing. "You are too young to do that. What if someone fetches you away?"
Agnes coloured. "I cannot leave Aunt Patience," she answered. "Think what she has done and suffered for me. Can I ever repay her?"
"We can never repay love; we can but give it in return," answered Mr. Ewan.
After the first two or three days life resumed its even course for them all.
If the Ewans and Patience and Agnes had been friends before, they were more than friends now. It seemed as if they could not bear to be parted.
"If we could only live all together, Aunt Patience," Agnes said one morning.