CHAPTER XVI.

_MISSIONARIES AT HOME._

THAT evening after tea, Mary and Pollie set out for the cliff, Mary to carry a bunch of flowers to the invalid and Pollie to ask her cousin Clara if she would go for a walk.

Mrs. Brown was out at the moment. Thus Mary found herself sitting quietly with Laura, the golden glory of the sunset lighting up the Culver Cliffs and tipping the distant sails as they passed along the horizon.

Laura had been idly scanning the local paper, and her thin fingers rested in it still.

"I was reading the names of the visitors here," she said. "There was no one we know yesterday. Clara and Ma generally go out in the evening and the time seems long."

"Perhaps you will let me come and see you sometimes?" said Mary. "We expect to be here a fortnight."

"If you like," said Laura listlessly. "Ma is going home to-morrow and Clara will be very dull, as she says, with my cough."

She was still glancing at the paper, when suddenly a deep colour spread over her face, and with an exclamation of dismay, she exclaimed hurriedly:

"Where's Clara—oh, Miss Loveday, call Clara!"

"She is out, dear. What is it?" said Mary soothingly. "She will be back directly."

Laura's cough had come on with such violence that she could not answer, but she pointed piteously to the list of visitors staying at one of the hotels.

"Mr. and Mrs. Henry Fulbert," read Mary—and then as by a flash, she realized the whole story!

This was the H. F. to whom poor Laura had given her heart; this was the one against whom her uncle had warned her! The Harry Fulbert who was not the true golden gold!

She took the invalid into her arms, stranger though she was, and tried to comfort her with the comfort wherewith she herself had been comforted of God.

"Poor Laura!" she whispered. "I see it all, but there is Jesus left. He healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds."

"My heart is broken," sobbed Laura. "I have been disobedient to what Ma would have liked; I've kept a secret from her all this year. He told me he would come back and ask me, and now he has gone and married someone else! I had heard he was going to, but I would not believe it!"

"Poor Laura!" again said the soft, soothing voice. "Let us tell the Lord Jesus all about it, and come to Him for forgiveness. Indeed, 'indeed' He will comfort you if you will let Him!"

"I do not know anything about Him," said Laura, as she allowed Mary to lay her on the sofa, and then she buried her head in the cushions and cried as if her heart would break.

"It makes me cough to cry," she moaned; "and I am so miserable! So miserable!"

"Can you bear to tell me all about it?" asked Mary, guessing that if she could bring herself to speak it out she would feel better.

But Laura only shook her head and lay sobbing and coughing.

"You will do yourself harm," said Mary at last. "I fear for you if you give way to grief like this—"

"And well you may," said Laura, turning round upon her, and looking at her with pathetic eyes. "Ma doesn't guess it, nor Clara either, but I'm dying—and I've no hope—none!"

Oh, how thankful Mary was that she knew the hope herself, and could tell the shrinking invalid of Him who has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, and with whose stripes we are healed!

"He loves 'me?'" questioned Laura, as she lay on her pillows utterly exhausted. "Can He love me who has never given Him a thought, except to turn away from Him; who has said in her heart she would do without Him?"

"Indeed He does," said Mary tenderly. "'While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.' That seems so wonderful, doesn't it, but so nice?"

Laura lay very still. The room grew darker and darker, but the others did not come back, and Mary was thankful for it.

At last, Laura put out her trembling hand. "I can never thank you," she whispered. "Would you mind kissing me?"

Mary bent over her. "You have let Jesus comfort you?" she asked tenderly. "It is not only mine, is it, dear?"

"Oh, no!" she responded earnestly. "But it is only just in time—"

At the moment Mrs. Brown came bustling in.

"Ma, dear," said Laura faintly, "come here."

There was some inexplicable change in the voice, something which even in the half darkness made a cold chill fall on that gay mother's heart.

"Ma, dear," she went on as Mrs. Brown came close, "you will hear all when I am gone, Clara will tell you. I've gone astray like a lost sheep, but Jesus Christ has found me. Will you forgive me?"

Mrs. Brown knelt down by her side, kissing her in an awestruck manner, and for a moment she felt two feeble arms round her neck, and then they relaxed their hold, and slowly fell back. Laura had gone where all tears are wiped from off all faces.

* * * * *

Pollie's little story is done—or perhaps not much more than begun.

The links, which were riveted in all that time of trouble, were a chain which no time or circumstance could break.

Harry—Mary's Harry—came back from China in a few months' time, and very soon he and Mary were married and went to Exeter for the promised year.

Pollie went to her home, to be the sunshine of her father and mother and Jim, waiting and working, ever with the view in her inmost heart of obeying her Lord's command to "go" to tell of his unsearchable riches to those who have never heard.

Clara went back to Chichester an altered girl, leaving that grave behind her as a lasting memorial of their sorrowful deception.

Mrs. Brown was stunned by the sudden blow of her daughter's death, and for years would only refer to the matter by a cold "I never acted like that myself, and I do not understand it."

All that time Clara's patience and love were severely taxed, but she came out of the ordeal as gold purified seven times.

And there came a day at last when her faith and patience were rewarded, and Mrs. Brown acknowledged with humbled spirit that she too needed a Saviour, and if Jesus had made Clara what she was, she might well trust Him.

[Illustration: Finis]