CHAPTER X.

A SONG.

AT last, the evening came to an end. Daisy departed to bed, Randall came in and looked at her, and sauntered out again, leaving the door open, and Mollie finally came for a few minutes, bringing a message from Mrs. Shaddock to the effect that Miss Ashlyn could retire whenever she felt inclined.

"We generally have friends in the evening, or she goes out, but mother will not let me sit up late because she says I should lose my colour," said Mollie, glancing at herself in the glass over the mantel-piece and shaking out her hair.

"She is very wise," answered Gertrude.

"But all the same, I do as I like," pursued Mollie. "I read in bed as often as not, or talk to nurse. She does not encourage that, I can tell you. But all the same, I do not get to bed as early as mother thinks."

"Do you feel happy in doing so?" asked Gertrude, looking up with a bright little smile.

"Oh dear, yes! 'What the eye doesn't see,' you know."

Gertrude shook her head, smiling.

"Are you awfully strict?" asked Mollie.

Gertrude paused for an instant. She felt this might be a momentous conversation.

She prayed in her heart one of those three-word prayers that she often pondered over, "Lord, help me!" And then, strengthened and calmed, she looked up at her questioner and answered—

"When I have found out what your mother's wishes are in things, I shall be 'awfully strict' in carrying them out."

"Shall you go telling tales, and asking her if I am to read in bed and do this and that?"

"You will see," said Gertrude with a smile.

"I should hate you if you did," said Mollie, also smiling.

"I hope you will not hate me," answered Gertrude, "but whether you do or not, I ought to do my duty, ought I not?"

"We shall see," said Mollie, looking at her somewhat curiously. "Now I must say good-night. I hope you will sleep well, Miss Ashlyn."

"Thank you, dear, for trying to make me at home," said Gertrude.

Then Mollie put out her cheek to be kissed, and Gertrude was at last alone.

But though she looked round on her cosy study, she did not feel it enough her own, as yet, to indulge herself in even a thought towards home.

She was just considering whether she should go to her own room, when Susan appeared with a little tray with biscuits and lemonade, asking if Miss Ashlyn would please to take some milk or anything more that she could bring her.

"I am to be well cared for, at any rate in this way," said Gertrude to herself. But she did not feel inclined to eat.

She cleared up her work, put the room straight, lowered the gas, and ascended to her own room and shut herself in.

The moonlight streamed over the floor, making the little jet of gas which was already lighted quite tiny in comparison. She went to her window and looked out. How still it all was!—except for the occasional sounds of music coming up from the neighbouring drawing-rooms.

Gertrude leant her head against the sash and buried her face in her hands, for some one near was singing a song which Otto had sung only last night—"When the mists have rolled in splendour." And after it was over, they had stepped outside to look at the harvest moon rising over the sea.

While they had stood there, he had asked her whether she had any desires for things to be different from what they were, or whether she were quite satisfied to do the will of God, just as she found it every day?

And she had thought about it, watching the slow red moon rise and rise out of the mist and enter a little cloud, till, after a few minutes' eclipse, she had suddenly shone out triumphantly above it in the clear deep blue.

And she had answered thoughtfully—

"I think my life feels something like that moon in the mist just now—"

"Uncertain as to its true duty and position?"

"Well, perhaps, Otto, but I don't know," she had answered.

"And then?" he had asked.

"I feel as if to-morrow were like that bit of dark cloud, which, after all, in the wonderful fashioning of our Father's hand, may only serve to brighten the light when it does shine out!"

"Yes," he said consideringly, "only it is so hard to wait so long in the mist and in the cloud, Gertrude!"

"If that is our appointed path?" she had asked.

"It might all be clear sky if the mists did not come from earth," said Otto.

"I see—self-made. Well, Otto, I don't know; all I can do is to ask God to work in me what He wills. I can't see the way myself, or tell how to act, sometimes."

"Nor I," he had answered in a low tone.

Then Phyllis's clear voice had called out from the front door, "Come, you two, it is ever so late, and we have to be early to-morrow!"

Gertrude remembered it all, while still some beautiful tenor voice sang over and over again—

"We shall know each other better When the mists have rolled away!"

"Ah, but that is in heaven," she murmured. "It is not a song of earthly things at all! To do our Father's will every day is our portion, and it shall be mine to do it willingly, if He will help me!"

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