Without any discussion, our plans were tacitly changed—no more was said about going home to dear Longfield. Every one felt, though no one trusted it to words, that the journey was impossible. For Muriel lay, day after day, on her little bed in an upper chamber, or was carried softly down in the middle of the day by her father, never complaining, but never attempting to move or talk. When we asked her if she felt ill, she always answered, “Oh, no! only so very tired.” Nothing more.

“She is dull, for want of the others to play with her. The boys should not run out and leave their sister alone,” said John, almost sharply, when one bright morning the lads’ merry voices came down from the Flat, while he and I were sitting by Muriel’s sofa in the still parlour.

“Father, let the boys play without me, please. Indeed, I do not mind. I had rather lie quiet here.”

“But it is not good for my little girl always to be quiet, and it grieves father.”

“Does it?” She roused herself, sat upright, and began to move her limbs, but wearily.

“That is right, my darling. Now let me see how well you can walk.”

Muriel slipped to her feet and tried to cross the room, catching at table and chairs—now, alas! not only for guidance but actual support. At last she began to stagger, and said, half crying:

“I can’t walk, I am so tired. Oh, do take me in your arms, dear father.”

Her father took her, looked long in her sightless face, then buried his against her shoulder, saying nothing. But I think in that moment he too saw, glittering and bare, the long-veiled Hand which, for this year past, I had seen stretched out of the immutable heavens, claiming that which was its own. Ever after there was discernible in John’s countenance a something which all the cares of his anxious yet happy life had never written there—an ineffaceable record, burnt in with fire.

He held her in his arms all day. He invented all sorts of tales and little amusements for her; and when she was tired of these he let her lie in his bosom and sleep. After her bed-time he asked me to go out with him on the Flat.

It was a misty night. The very cows and asses stood up large and spectral as shadows. There was not a single star to be seen.

We took our walk along the terrace and came back again, without exchanging a single word. Then John said hastily:

“I am glad her mother was so busy today—too busy to notice.”

“Yes,” I answered; unconnected as his words were.

“Do you understand me, Phineas? Her mother must not on any account be led to imagine, or to fear—anything. You must not look as you looked this morning. You must not, Phineas.”

He spoke almost angrily. I answered in a few quieting words. We were silent, until over the common we caught sight of the light in Muriel’s window. Then I felt rather than heard the father’s groan.

“Oh, God! my only daughter—my dearest child!”

Yes, she was the dearest. I knew it. Strange mystery, that He should so often take, by death or otherwise, the DEAREST—always the dearest. Strange that He should hear us cry—us writhing in the dust, “O Father, anything, anything but this!” But our Father answers not; and meanwhile the desire of our eyes—be it a life, a love, or a blessing—slowly, slowly goes—is gone. And yet we have to believe in our Father. Perhaps of all trials to human faith this is the sorest. Thanks be to God if He puts into our hearts such love towards Him that even while He slays us we can trust Him still.

This father—this broken-hearted earthly father—could.

When we sat at the supper-table—Ursula, John, and I, the children being all in bed—no one could have told that there was any shadow over us, more than the sadly-familiar pain of the darling of the house being “not so strong as she used to be.”

“But I think she will be, John. We shall have her quite about again, before—”

The mother stopped, slightly smiling. It was, indeed, an especial mercy of heaven which put that unaccountable blindness before her eyes, and gave her other duties and other cares to intercept the thought of Muriel. While, from morning till night, it was the incessant secret care of her husband, myself, and good Mrs. Tod, to keep her out of her little daughter’s sight, and prevent her mind from catching the danger of one single fear.

Thus, within a week or two, the mother lay down cheerfully upon her couch of pain, and gave another child to the household—a little sister to Muriel.

Muriel was the first to whom the news was told. Her father told it. His natural joy and thankfulness seemed for the moment to efface every other thought.

“She is come, darling! little Maud is come. I am very rich—for I have two daughters now.”

“Muriel is glad, father.” But she showed her gladness in a strangely quiet, meditative way, unlike a child—unlike even her old self.

“What are you thinking of, my pet?”

“That—though father has another daughter, I hope he will remember the first one sometimes.”

“She is jealous!” cried John, in the curious delight with which he always detected in her any weakness, any fault, which brought her down to the safe level of humanity. “See, Uncle Phineas, our Muriel is actually jealous.”

But Muriel only smiled.

That smile—so serene—so apart from every feeling or passion appertaining to us who are “of the earth, earthy,” smote the father to the heart’s core.

He sat down by her, and she crept up into his arms.

“What day is it, father?”

“The first of December.”

“I am glad. Little Maud’s birthday will be in the same month as mine.”

“But you came in the snow, Muriel, and now it is warm and mild.”

“There will be snow on my birthday, though. There always is. The snow is fond of me, father. It would like me to lie down and be all covered over, so that you could not find me anywhere.”

I heard John try to echo her weak, soft laugh.

“This month it will be eleven years since I was born, will it not, father?”

“Yes, my darling.”

“What a long time! Then, when my little sister is as old as I am, I shall be-that is, I should have been—a woman grown. Fancy me twenty years old, as tall as mother, wearing a gown like her, talking and ordering, and busy about the house. How funny!” and she laughed again. “Oh! no, father, I couldn’t do it. I had better remain always your little Muriel, weak and small, who liked to creep close to you, and go to sleep in this way.”

She ceased talking—very soon she was sound asleep. But—the father!

Muriel faded, though slowly. Sometimes she was so well for an hour or two that the Hand seemed drawn back into the clouds, till of a sudden again we discerned it there.

One Sunday—it was ten days or so after Maud’s birth, and the weather had been so bitterly cold that the mother had herself forbidden our bringing Muriel to the other side of the house where she and the baby lay—Mrs. Tod was laying the dinner, and John stood at the window playing with his three boys.

He turned abruptly, and saw all the chairs placed round the table—all save one.

“Where is Muriel’s chair, Mrs. Tod?”

“Sir, she says she feels so tired like, she’d rather not come down today,” answered Mrs. Tod, hesitatingly.

“Not come down?”

“Maybe better not, Mr. Halifax. Look out at the snow. It’ll be warmer for the dear child tomorrow.”

“You are right. Yes, I had forgotten the snow. She shall come down tomorrow.”

I caught Mrs. Tod’s eyes; they were running over. She was too wise to speak of it—but she knew the truth as well as we.

This Sunday—I remember it well—was the first day we sat down to dinner with the one place vacant.

For a few days longer, her father, every evening when he came in from the mills, persisted in carrying her down, as he had said, holding her on his knee during tea, then amusing her and letting the boys amuse her for half-an-hour or so before bed-time. But at the week’s end even this ceased.

When Mrs. Halifax, quite convalescent, was brought triumphantly to her old place at our happy Sunday dinner-table, and all the boys came pressing about her, vying which should get most kisses from little sister Maud—she looked round, surprised amidst her smiling, and asked:

“Where is Muriel?”

“She seems to feel this bitter weather a good deal,” John said; “and I thought it better she should not come down to dinner.”

“No,” added Guy, wondering and dolefully, “sister has not been down to dinner with us for a great many days.”

The mother started; looked first at her husband, and then at me.

“Why did nobody tell me this?”

“Love—there was nothing new to be told.”

“Has the child had any illness that I do not know of?”

“No.”

“Has Dr. Jessop seen her?”

“Several times.”

“Mother,” said Guy, eager to comfort—for naughty as he was sometimes, he was the most tender-hearted of all the boys, especially to Muriel and to his mother,—“sister isn’t ill a bit, I know. She was laughing and talking with me just now—saying she knows she could carry baby a great deal better than I could. She is as merry as ever she can be.”

The mother kissed him in her quick, eager way—the sole indication of that maternal love which was in her almost a passion. She looked more satisfied.

Nevertheless, when Mrs. Tod came into the parlour, she rose and put little Maud into her arms.

“Take baby, please, while I go up to see Muriel.”

“Don’t—now don’t, please, Mrs. Halifax,” cried earnestly the good woman.

Ursula turned very pale. “They ought to have told me,” she muttered; “John, YOU MUST let me go and see my child.”

“Presently—presently—Guy, run up and play with Muriel. Phineas, take the others with you. You shall go up-stairs in one minute, my darling wife!”

He turned us all out of the room, and shut the door. How he told her that which was necessary she should know—that which Dr. Jessop himself had told us this very morning—how the father and mother had borne this first open revelation of their unutterable grief—for ever remained unknown.

I was sitting by Muriel’s bed, when they came up-stairs. The darling laid listening to her brother, who was squatted on her pillow, making all sorts of funny talk. There was a smile on her face; she looked quite rosy: I hoped Ursula might not notice, just for the time being, the great change the last few weeks had made.

But she did—who could ever blindfold a mother? For a moment I saw her recoil—then turn to her husband with a dumb, piteous, desperate look, as though to say, “Help me—my sorrow is more than I can bear!”

But Muriel, hearing the step, cried with a joyful cry, “Mother! it’s my mother!”

The mother folded her to her breast.

Muriel shed a tear or two there—in a satisfied, peaceful way; the mother did not weep at all. Her self-command, so far as speech went, was miraculous. For her look—but then she knew the child was blind.

“Now,” she said, “my pet will be good and not cry? It would do her harm. We must be very happy today.”

“Oh, yes.” Then, in a fond whisper, “Please, I do so want to see little Maud.”

“Who?” with an absent gaze.

“My little sister Maud—Maud that is to take my place, and be everybody’s darling now.”

“Hush, Muriel,” said the father, hoarsely.

A strangely soft smile broke over her face—and she was silent.

The new baby was carried up-stairs proudly, by Mrs. Tod, all the boys following. Quite a levee was held round the bed, where, laid close beside her, her weak hands being guided over the tiny face and form, Muriel first “saw” her little sister. She was greatly pleased. With a grave elder-sisterly air she felt all over the baby-limbs, and when Maud set up an indignant cry, began hushing her with so quaint an imitation of motherliness, that we were all amused.

“You’ll be a capital nurse in a month or two, my pretty!” said Mrs. Tod.

Muriel only smiled. “How fat she is!—and look, how fast her fingers take hold! And her head is so round, and her hair feels so soft—as soft as my dove’s neck at Longfield. What colour is it? Like mine?”

It was; nearly the same shade. Maud bore, the mother declared, the strongest likeness to Muriel.

“I am so glad. But these”—touching her eyes anxiously.

“No—my darling. Not like you there,” was the low answer.

“I am VERY glad. Please, little Maud, don’t cry—it’s only sister touching you. How wide open your eyes feel! I wonder,”—with a thoughtful pause—“I wonder if you can see me. Little Maud, I should like you to see sister.”

“She does see, of course; how she stares!” cried Guy. And then Edwin began to argue to the contrary, protesting that as kittens and puppies could not see at first, he believed little babies did not: which produced a warm altercation among the children gathered round the bed, while Muriel lay back quietly on her pillow, with her little sister fondly hugged............