Year: 1860

/ All the il9nt went out OF my chiu-liie when
he left Ine. 1t was as if the sun had been
suddenly blOtted out of the day, changing ii
to the blankness of the night.


A year after he went my father brought
home-a wife. If he hated me because
had lived when my mother died, how hard
was it for me to withstand return of hatred,
wheu he presented to me that woman as my
mother, whom it was a degradation to ac-
knowledge as my fathers wife.


She was ilLbred, coarse, vulgar-a maneu-
yering wateriug-plaee widow of forty, who
had set her springs well to catch my fathers
fortune-and she caught it. That she took
the incumbrance of an old man with it, l
fancy, mattered little to her.


She quccned it right grandly at Elmwood.
She would have made much of me, in her
good-natured but vulgar way, but that l
shrank from her. l could not bear to hear,
in her vulgar utterance, and sef-satisfed
manner, as if showing off some part of her
new possessions, those words | had never
heard from the dead lips of her whose place
she had occupied" My daughter" Was !
to be paraded as her daughter-hers'


But for Sherrard's letters I could not have
lived, believe. He wrote always of coming
home, of seeing me; and, silent, dreary and
lonely as was, Ilearned, in girlish romance,
to interpret these brotherly words as know
now they never should have been interpreted.
| thought, alas, that he loved me, and so let
my yearning, lonely heart stretch out its
fibres clear across ocean and continent to
cling fondly to him.


was twenty-five when he came home, and
happier than / had been in my girlhood,
though had waded through deep seas of
sorrows since.


Ny father was dead. ] had nursed him
through years of illness, at first bearing ST.
lently, but with rcbellious spirit, his scon
and impatence, but doggedly doing what
called my duty, as if duty is ever all done
without love.


At length a new rector came to the living,
friend of Sherrard in his youth, who wrote
home to ask my father to present it to him.
OF him, meeting him often at my fathers
bedside, I learned my alphabet in Christ
ianity. For ], born and bred in Christian
land, had been until that hour as very
heather as any We send missionaries to con-
vert to the uttermost parts of the earth.


grew strangely humble under this new
influence, for learned to know myself But
was happier, oh, how far happier, than in
in the days of my pride l did my duty
lovingly now, and found it easy. My father
had died at peace with me, and gladdened
by my heartfelt forgiveness of all the injus-
tice he had heaped upon me, and had
mourned his loss as once never expected
to do. and my stepmother were living
together at Elmwood, and as she had soft
ened considerably by long association with
persons of refinement, and / had become
more thoughtful and less arrogant, we really
were getting on in a sort of comfort-I in
my charity work, she in her endless en-
broidery.


Sherrard brought with him little, dark
child, with beautiful large eyes, looking out
of sallow face, and her ayah, or Hindos-
tanee nurse. Her name, he told me, was
Esther Ward, and she had been consigned
to his guardianship by her dying father.
Her mother, he added, delicate young
creature, died at Calcutta just before the
ship sailed, and as Esther had no friends in
India, his only resource was to bring her
home.


He had hoped to place her with Captain
Wards parents or sisters, but he found none
of them prepared to receive her-two of the
sisters being abroad, and the third an un-
married lady, absorbed in the care of her in
valid father, and living in lodgings where
there was no room for the little girl. He
besought me to take charge of her for the
present, and | consented, because he asked
it, not, am sure, out of any great sympathy
with the child, and impatient to dismiss the
subject, that we might converse upon those
Of greater personal interest.


Oh, how / learned to love Sherrard, to
watch in silence each turn of his head, each
movement of his tall and graceful figure, to
listen afar off to the tones of his voice, and
his footsteps that always fell with clear, ring
ing sound.


He remained in England year, and then
returned to India. | had by that time be-
come 50 much attached to Esther that | did
not wait for his request, but earned look of
gratitude long treasured, by ofivTlrg, of my
own choice, to keep her with me during the
five years of his absence, unless she should
be claimed by her relations.


Esther was fourteen when Sherrard brought
her home. but such pale and sickly creature
that Ihad at first mistaken herfor mere child.
And so she was in mind, for she knew no.
thing beyond what her Hindostanee nurse
had taught her, and to read little in the
simnlnst hooE