Monday in regard to it."

Mildred's heart beat rapidly as he handed her a large,
businesslike-looking letter and went softly out again. In the dim light
of the great stained-glass windows she read that poor Muffit had
over-taxed her eyes, and that they were so badly affected she could not
go back to school for the spring term. In looking for some one who could
be eyes for their Mildred, so that she might go on with her studies at
home, they had thought of this other Mildred, the little English girl,
whose low, musical voice had been so carefully trained by her father in
reading aloud. By one of these strange providences which we never
recognize as such at the time, Mr. Rowland had broken his spectacles the
last evening of Mildred's stay in New York. She had offered to read the
magazine article which he was particularly anxious to hear, and they had
been charmed by her beautifully modulated voice. Now the letter had been
written to offer her a liberal salary and a home for the summer.

Mildred gave a gasp of astonishment. It was not the almost miraculous
finding of what she had come to seek that overwhelmed her. It was a
feeling that swept across her like a flood, warm and sweet and tender;
the sudden realization that a hand stronger than death and wise above
all human understanding had her in its keeping. She dropped on her knees
at the flower-decked altar-rail, with face upturned and radiant; no
longer lonely; no longer afraid of what the future might hold. She had
come into her inheritance.

[Illustration: "SHE READ THAT POOR MUFFIT HAD OVERTAXED HER EYES."]

Kneeling there she looked back again to her father's lowly grave in the
little churchyard across the seas, but she saw it no longer through