She brought her work one morning, and sat by the luxurious chair where Claire had been imprisoned, with her injured foot skillfully arranged on a hassock.

"How pretty it is," Claire said, watching the crimson silk flowers grow on the canvas under skillful fingers; "do you enjoy working on it?"

The tone of voice which answered her was dissatisfied in the extreme:

"Oh, I suppose so; as well as I enjoy anything that there is to do. One must employ one's self in some way, and we live such a humdrum life here that there is chance for very little variety. I am puzzled to know how you manage it, Miss Benedict; you have been accustomed to such different surroundings. This is a sharp enough contrast to Chester. Have you been in Chester yet, Miss Benedict? Well, it is just a nice little city; hardly large enough to be called a city. The society is good, and there is always something going on, and when I come out here I am at an utter loss what to do with myself. But then, Chester is very far from being Boston, and if I had had the advantages of Boston all my life, as you have, I feel sure I could not endure a month of South Plains. It is bad enough for me. How do you bear it?"

Claire could only smile in answer to this. There were circumstances connected with her removal from Boston which were too keenly felt to touch with a careless hand. She hastened to ask questions.

"What is there pleasant in Chester? I have promised myself to go there some Saturday, and see what I can find in the library."

"Oh, there is a very fair library there, I believe, for a town of its size, but I never patronize it; we have books enough. By the way, Miss Benedict, you are welcome to the use of our library. Papa will be glad to have some one enjoying the books. The girls have as much as they can endure of books in school, and Louis is not literary in his tastes; I am almost the only reader. Mamma is so busy with various city benevolences that, what with her housekeeping and social cares, she rarely has time for much reading. Oh, Chester is well enough. There are concerts, you know, and lectures, or entertainments of some sort; one can keep busy there, if one accepts invitations. But, to tell you the truth, the whole thing often bores me beyond endurance, and I am glad to get out here to be away from it all. I don't like my life. I think I have talents for something better, if one could only find what it is—the something better, I mean."

There was a pretty flush on her discontented face as she looked up eagerly to see how this confidence was being received. Claire's face was gently sympathetic, and grave. Alice took courage.

"Mamma laughs at me, and says I am visionary, and that I want to have a career, and that I must be content to fill my sphere in life, as my ancestors have done before me; but really I am not content. I don't like the sort of life spread out before me for generations back; marrying, you know, and keeping up a handsome house, and receiving and paying visits, and giving a grand party once a year, when you are sure to offend somebody to whom you were indebted in some way, and whom you forgot. Now, do you see any particular enjoyment in that sort of thing?"

"No," said Claire unhesitatingly, "I do not."

"I'm real glad to hear you say so. Mamma thinks it is dreadful to be discontented with one's lot; but I am. I would like a career of some sort; anything that would absorb me. And yet I don't want to be poor. I should shrink from that. Do you really find it easier to get along with life, now that you have not time to think, as you used?"

Another question to be gently put aside. What did this girl know of the charmed life which she had lived at home, and of the father who had been its centre? She could not go into the depths of her heart and drag out its memories, unless there were a very grave reason for so doing.

"I have always lived a very busy life," she answered, evasively; "but before I can help you with any of my experiences, I must ask one question: Are you not a Christian, Miss Ansted?"

Apparently it was an amazing question to the young girl. Her cheeks took a deeper flush; she let her canvas half drop from her hand, and fixed inquiring eyes on her questioner.

"Why, yes; that is, I suppose I am, or hope I am, or something; I am a member of the church, if that is what you mean."

"It is not in the least what I mean. That is only the outward sign—worthless, if it is not indeed a sign of union with Christ. Such a union as furnishes a career, Miss Ansted, which alone is worthy of you. Such a union as carries you captive—making your time and your money, and your talents, not your own, but his. There is nothing dissatisfying about such a life, my friend. It almost lifts one above the accident of outward surroundings."

There was an undoubted amazement expressed on Miss Ansted's face now.

"I don't in the least understand you," she said. "What has my being a member of the church to do with all this time which lies on my hands just now, I should like to know. If you mean mission bands and benevolent societies, and all that sort of thing, my tastes don't lie in that direction, in the least. Mamma does enough of that for the entire family; she always has some poky board meeting to attend. I have sat shivering in the carriage, and waited for her last words so many times, that I am utterly sick of the whole thing. Oh, I am a member, of course, and give money; that is all they want. But you are mistaken in supposing that these things help me in the least."

"I don't think so," Claire said, unable to help smiling over the darkness which had so misunderstood and misinterpreted Christian work, and yet feeling that it called for tears rather than smiles; "these things are only more of the 'outward signs.'"

They were interrupted then, and Claire was not sorry. She wanted to think over her ground. There was no use in casting these pearls of truth before Alice Ansted, she was too utterly in the dark to see them. A young lady she was, well educated, in the common acceptation of that term, accomplished, so far as music and French were concerned, skillful as regards embroidery and worsted work; but evidently the veriest child as regarded the Christian life, though she had been a member of the visible church for years. If she were to be helped at all, Claire must come down from the heights where she walked and meet her on some common ground.

"I wonder how the old church would do?" she asked herself. "I wish I could get her interested in it, both for her sake and for the sake of the church."

Had she heard the report given below of this brief conversation, she might have been discouraged, for she was but a young worker after all, and had not met with many rebuffs.

"Mamma, she is a regular little fanatic," so Alice affirmed. "You ought to have heard her talk to me! It sounded just like quotations from that old book of sermons that grandma used to pore over. I didn't know what she meant."

"Probably she did not either," was the comment of this Christian mother. "Some very young people occasionally fall into that style, talking heroics, using theological terms of which they can not grasp the meaning, and fancy it a higher type of religion. She will probably know both less and more as she grows older."

Then was Miss Benedict's pupil, Ella, emboldened to come to the rescue of her teacher's reputation:

"But, mamma, she is not so very young. I saw her birthday book, and the date made her twenty in September."

"Indeed!" said Mrs. Ansted, with amused smile, "that is quite a patriarchal age. She certainly ought to be well posted in all theological dogmas by this time. My dear, it is one of the worst ages for a young woman—if she isn't absorbed with an engagement by that time to fancy herself superior."

"Oh, mamma! you don't know Miss Benedict. She doesn't fancy herself superior to anybody. She is just as sweet and lovely as she can be. All the girls like her, and I think she has the nicest religion of anybody I know!" This outburst was from Fannie.

"Very well, dear," answered the mother complacently; "admire her as much as you like. She is quite as safe a shrine as any for a young girl like you to worship at. You must always have some one. I am glad the girls like her, poor thing; her life must be doleful enough at best. It is certainly a great change." And the benevolent mother sighed in sympathy. She was glad to be able to put what she thought was a little sunshine from her elegant home into the poor music-teacher's lot. She even wondered, as she waited for her carriage to drive down town, whether the sprained ankle were not a providential arrangement to enable her to give a few days of rest and luxury to this unfortunate girl.

This thought she kept quite to herself. She did not quite accept such strained and peculiar views of Providence. It savored a little of fanaticism—a thing which she disapproved, and Mr. Ansted disliked; but then, some people thought such things, and it was barely possible that they were sometimes correct.

She went out to her carriage still thinking these thoughts, and Claire, watching her from the upper window, said to herself:

"I wonder if I can help her? I wonder if God means me to? Of course, I am set down here for something." She had no doubt at all about the providence in it.

The son of the house had added one sentence to the family discussion:

"You might have known that she would be a fanatic, after you found that she was Sydney Benedict's daughter. He was the wildest kind of a visionary. Porter was talking about him to-day. He knew them in Boston. He says Benedict gave away enough every year to support his family in splendid style. They are reaping the results of his extravagance."

This is only one of the many different ways which there are of looking at things.

Nevertheless the fair fanatic seemed to be an attractive object to the entire family. Louis, not hitherto particularly fond of evenings at home, found himself lingering in the up-stairs library, whither he had himself wheeled the large chair with the patient seated therein. As the days passed, she persisted in making herself useful, and Ella and Fannie, under her daily tuition, were making very marked progress in music, as well as in some other things that their mother did not understand about so well. It was on one of these cosey evenings that Louis occupied the piano-stool, he and Alice having been performing snatches of favorite duets, until Alice was summoned to the parlors.

"Come down, won't you, Louis? that is a good boy. It is the Powell girls, and Dick will be with them, I presume." This had been Alice's petition just as she was leaving the room.

But Louis had elevated both eyebrows and shoulders.

"The Powell girls!" he repeated. "Not if this individual knows himself! I never inflict myself on the Powell girls, if there is any possibility of avoiding it; and as for Dick, I would go a square out of my way any time, to save boring him. Excuse me, please, Alice; I am not at home, or I am at home, and indisposed—just as you please; the latter has the merit of truth. It is my duty to stay here and entertain Miss Benedict, since the girls have deserted her.

"I have no doubt that you would excuse me with pleasure, but nevertheless I consider it my duty to stay!" This last was merrily added, just as Alice closed the door.

Claire did not wait to reply to the banter, but plunged at once into the centre of the thought which had been growing on her for several days.

"Mr. Ansted, do you know, I wish I could enlist both you and your sisters as helpers in the renovation of the old church down town?"

"What! the old brick rookery on the corner? My dear young lady, your faith is sublime, and your knowledge of this precious village limited! That concern was past renovating some years before the flood. It was about that time, or a little later, that my respected grandfather tried to remodel the seats, and raised such a storm of indignation about his ears that it took a century to calm the people down; so tradition says. Whatever you undertake to do will be a failure; I feel it my duty to inform you of so much. And now I am burning with a desire to ask a rude question: Why do you care to do anything with it? Why does it interest you in the least? I beg your pardon if I am meddling with what does not concern me, but I was amused over the affair when the girls came home and petitioned to join the charmed circle. Why a lady who was here but for a passing season or so, should interest herself in the old horror, was beyond my comprehension. Is it strictly benevolence, may I ask?"

"I don't think it is benevolence at all. It is a plain-faced duty."

"Duty!" The heavy eyebrows were raised again. "I don't comprehend you. Why should a stranger to this miserable, little, squeezed-up village, and one who by all the laws of association and affinity will surely not spend much of her time here, have any duties connected with that old box, which the church fathers have allowed to run into desolation and disgrace for so many years, that the present generation accepts it as a matter of course?"

"Will you allow me to ask you one question, Mr. Ansted? Are you a Christian?"