"True; the music!" said the mother,
comprehending. "Dear child you must confide in
me. What! not afraid, surely? How the old
men in the wards, and the children in the
schools, would laugh at that original idea!
You would be sadly out of fashion to be afraid
of Mother Augustine."

Such a speech was too much for Hester. It
broke all restraint. Her face dropped down
upon her open hands, and she sobbed in an
abandonment of loneliness and grief.

"There is nothing but rest for this," said
the mother, standing before her, an arm round
the bowed shoulders, a hand on the bent head.
"A long sleep first, and then—confidence."

And so saying she led, almost carried, the
girl to the door, across the hall, and away up
that massive brown staircase, through the
jewelled sunlight.

"You must not be afraid that I am going to
put you into hospital," she said, smiling, as they
went along, Hester walking composedly now,
but hanging her tear-stained face, and clinging
to the mother's hand. "We have a nice little
cell for stray children like you. Sometimes we
call it 'the little bower,' and sometimes 'the
little arbour,' because we think it so pretty, and
find it so useful."

So in the little harbour Hester was moored,
and left alone, the nun having possessed herself
of the name and address of Lady Humphrey.
The prettiness of the room was not in truth
made out of the luxury of its appointments;
but bright it was, as a brown shining floor,
snow-white walls, a white little bed, and a vine
round the window could make it.

And there was a garden under the window
of this little bower. It would seem that the
very apple trees of that so ancient nobleman,
which his housekeeper used to stew in their
season, were still bearing their fruit between
its walls. At least there are nowhere but the
ghosts of dead gardeners who could tell us to a
certainty whether they were the same trees or
not. Yet, however that might be, the sick old
men and women in the hospital of St. Mark
knew the taste of the ripe fruit in the cup of
their cooling drink. Now a long gleaming row
of white lilies lifted the dew in their chalices to
the sunlight, making a line of dazzling fringe
along the sombre ivy of the wall. Vagrant
boughs of jessamine were swinging loose upon
the air, grasping at the breeze, as if the tough
old bricks were not enough for them to cling
to. Birds that had their nests in the trees,
whose ancestors had had their nests in the same
trees, were singing jubilates for the morning,
perhaps meaning them for thanksgiving, that
they, having been born city birds, had been so
happy in their generation, never fearing what
was to become of their posterity when the fair
garden should be swept away with another
cycle, when a weedy crop of houses should have
struck root in the mellow earth, shooting their
chimneys far higher than these branches had
dared to soar.

This garden was all still, all holy. Neither
the noise nor the wickedness of the city seemed
to reach it, though both had been there, without
a doubt, in the echo; in the memory and
suggestion of a thing past, and left away in the
distance; making the silence more delicious,
making the holiness more solemn. Yet there
were other things stirring in it at this hour,
besides the bees. A few tranquil sickly faces
were moving between the ranks of the flower
beds, the rows of precious herbs, the nests of
fragrant fruit, smiling here, and sighing there;
mayhap wondering wistfully at the bounty of
the good God, who had so brought them to life
again out of the throes of anguish, and the
travails of death, to thus bask in a sunny
atmosphere of peace and bloom; to rest and be
strengthened, and be led hither and thither;
to be dealt with, in a sweet providence, by the
unwonted hands of love. For these were the
mother's convalescent patients from the hospital,
and they were taking their morning airing while
the sun was warm and new.

These things Hester saw from between the
leaves of her vine; and these, and the ideas
they brought with them, she gathered under
the pillow of the little white bed, and so slept
upon them; the plaining and exulting of that
music which had ceased still following her
slumbers, and taking the guidance of her
dreams. And she wakened refreshed, though
with a bruise somewhere in her heart that
smarted at the touch of a recollection. And
the mid-day sun was then hot upon the window.

Her limp white dress had been removed, and
in its place she had a plain black robe, very
neat and slim, with a broad leather belt to gird
its folds round her waist. And while this was
being assumed she considered, would it not be
well if she could find a home in this place?
She could sew, teach, tend upon the sick. She
would see about it.

Two people were walking round the garden
now, talking, stopping, walking slowly, very
earnest. They were Sir Archie Munro and his
sister, the Mother Augustine.

"Good God, drop a blessing on those two
moving heads!" cried Hester, suddenly awaking
to an enthusiasm of gratitude. "I will
hold by their hands and they shall not send me
back to Hampton Court. They will help me to
be independent, and I shall not be shaken off
any more. I shall not be loved and forgotten,
cherished and deserted. Oh, Lady Humphrey!
Oh, Mr. Pierce!"

The figures in the garden turned at the
moment and came back again down the path, as if
responding unconsciously to her cry; the
features growing distinct each moment; two faces
breathing and moving through the warm air
together; two heads laid together for her good,
had she but known it; two pairs of eyes full of
promise for her, as she was vaguely aware,
though she felt herself too strange in her new
place in their lives to even dare to look such
promise in the face. And these two people
were—the rival of Pierce Humphrey, and the
sister of the rival. And Hester was in their