Four Gates by Amy Le Feuvre

"I said, 'These painful shoes, I cannot see Why any longer they should cumber me. ' So left I them behind, and for a while The change seemed pleasant, and did me beguile. " ROSE'S DIARY.

SHE sat huddled up in a shawl over the dying embers of her fire. It was past midnight, but Honor did not attempt to go to bed. For over two hours she had been revolving things in her mind, and she was unsettled and doubtful still. All the instincts of her early training warned her against taking this sudden and precipitate step. She was a deeply religious girl at heart, and through all her troubles and difficulties had had an unswerving trust in God. But life had been becoming more difficult to her of late. She never could get over the bitterness of her short time at home, when she realised how quickly her place had been filled up. Even her father seemed too delighted and engrossed with the new organist to take much notice of his eldest daughter. His farewell words still rang in her ears:

"Well, good-bye, my dear. It is wonderful how well everything has turned out, hasn't it? The money you send home is a real help; and now we have Mr. Danby, I really feel as if I have a curate. He is so willing and capable in all parish matters, and his music is actually bringing strangers to the church. He manages the choir so well; and, of course, a man has a great advantage over a woman for that kind of thing."

"Yes," said Honor bravely; "I don't think you have missed me at all."

"Oh, well, we did at first, when Miss Paton was new to everything; but now she is my wife's right hand, and the children are getting accustomed to her. Write and tell us how you are getting on. It is a matter of thankfulness to me that you are in such comfortable surroundings."

"They don't want me back," she thought; "no one wants me or cares about me. Mrs. Montmorency could get fifty girls to do for her as well and better than I do. And now my chance seems to have come, and I know if I miss it, I shall not have another. I shall be a paid companion to the end of my days, and every day will be greyer and more miserable than the one before it. I am not the kind of girl that men would like to marry. And this makes it all the more wonderful that Mr. Selkirk should want me. He does, or he would have gone away and said nothing. And I should love to have a home of my own and feel I had people depending on me for comfort and help. Fay is simply a darling! I would go anywhere-to the other end of the world-for her sake alone! And if I had a home, I could have the children by turn to stay with me. Emily would be delighted, I know; and how they would love it! It is a great temptation. I like him, too, quite as much as I have ever liked any man; and it is wonderful that he should like me."

Then Honor's conscience began to speak.

"The real reason against it is the way he wants to do it. It is underhand, as if we were ashamed of doing it; it wouldn't be acting rightly towards Mrs. Montmorency to leave her so suddenly in the lurch. Then what will father say? And I'm very much afraid that Mr. Selkirk does not care for religious things. He told me he did not often go to church, and I know-the Bible tells me-that it is wrong to be joined to an unbeliever. Yet he isn't that. He must talk to Fay about good things, as she knows such a lot about them, and he told me his first wife was deeply religious. More than once he has spoken of woman's influence, and what a lot it can do for a man. And if I could help him in that way, how splendid it would be! I partly understand how he shrinks from the publicity of the usual wedding. I should hate it myself. It is so much more simple and real to walk quietly into a little empty church, and with ourselves only be married in the sight of God.

"How I wish I knew what to do! I have to decide so quickly. If I had Pauline here, I would get her to advise me. But as it is, I can consult no one. I feel it is my one chance of being married; I know I shall never get another. It is the secrecy of it and the quickness of it that makes it seem wrong."

She got up from her chair and paced the room. She felt it was a crisis in her life. Yet when she knelt to pray, no words would come. Until at last she cried out:

"O God, I want to do it! I want to do it! Make it right for me to do it!"

And that was all the prayer she made before going to bed.

Through her half-waking hours, the words rang in her ears:

"How can two walk together, except they be agreed?"

And when she arose the next morning, her heart was still in a troubled turmoil. She thought of her Eastern outlook through life, for her mind perpetually dwelt upon Mrs. Daventry's quaint fancy, and she seemed to see before her more sunshine than she had ever experienced in her life, and a cessation of the bitter cutting blasts which had been her portion for so long.

Perhaps that day, if Mrs. Montmorency had been in one of her cheerful, good-tempered moods, the course of Honor's life would have been changed. But she was unusually irritable and exacting, and Honor's absence of mind in one or two small matters drew from her scathing reproof.

"I really never saw anyone so stupid, Miss Broughton! I ought to have the patience of Job to live with you! I am not feeling well to-day, and you seem to do your utmost to try my nerves! I wish sometimes that I had never engaged you. You are a most depressing companion, and so awkward and clumsy in your movements."

She had often been as angry and unjust before, but Honor knew her captious moods never lasted. To-day, however, her words seemed to burn and sting with unusual force.

"I never shall please her; she will be glad to get rid of me. " And Honor moved about with compressed lips and flashing eyes.

When she reminded Mrs. Montmorency of Fay's invitation to tea, she said: