unawares.

"Why do you cry?" she asked gently.

"I think it must be so hard for you," said Emma; "it's been very hard
for me, although I love Joseph with all my heart; but you are so
childish and so good-looking, it seems someways as if it came harder on
you; and then that Mr. Halsey hasn't got the warmth of heart that Joseph
has."

To this astonishing reply Susannah found no answer. Emma was too
respectable, too honest in her sympathy, to be derided, but Susannah's
understanding could ill endure the thought that the incident of the hour
was important. As the outcome of honest delusion, she might forgive it;
something in the pathos of Halsey's strained face as she remembered his
look when she turned away weeping, urged her to forgiveness.

"Mr. Halsey is nothing to me," said Susannah at last; she spoke with a
falter in her voice, for Emma's unfeigned grief touched her.

"Oh! don't say that. Some judgment might come on you that would be worse
than any suffering that would come from obedience to the word of the
Lord; and besides, it's the will of God, you see; and of course He'll
see that it's done, so you'd be punished for rebellion, and you'd have
to obey all the same."

Susannah was beginning to be infected by this steady assumption that God
had indeed spoken. Could it be possible?