The White Lady by Grace Livingston Hill Page B

rest continually upon her aunt’s tranquil brow. She wondered whether all churches had prayer meetings. She felt sure they had no such service in the fashionable church that she attended, though they possibly called it something else. She would look up her prayer book and try to fasten her thoughts on religious ideas. She wished Lent were not over, that she might attend those special services and give up something during the season of self-denial. Then she remembered again that her whole life now was to be one of self-denial, and she wondered whether possibly that would not work the desired effect upon her character. She would not even have the wherewithal to deny herself but must do it anyway with everything possible, if she would live at all and have the bare necessities of life.
    In a little book on her aunt’s bureau she had read that God sometimes had to feed prosperity to some people in very small spoonfuls, because when they had everything they wanted they straightway forgot Him, and that loss and trouble were sometimes God’s way of calling His own to Him. She wondered whether God could be calling her. Her aunt’s gentle, wistful “God be with you, my child” when she had bade her good night, stayed with her and strengthened this impression.
    It was not Miss Wetherill’s way to “talk religion” to anyone. She would not have known how, and her quavering voice might have failed her; but she lived it more than most people, and she had a way of taking it for granted that everyone else loved her Lord, and of speaking to them of heavenly things in a quiet, everyday sort of voice, as if they, too, were making heaven their goal.
    Altogether, Constance took her way into the world of frivolity again, feeling that she had had a glimpse into a bit of heaven on earth. She almost dreaded the contact with the bright world lest her newly awakened faculties should be numbed. She contemplated giving up her visit but thought better of it, remembering there might be letters awaiting her and that her grandmother would be astonished if she went home without going there at all. She did not wish to arouse suspicion, so she went on. Besides, there might be more to learn before her experiment was put into actual practice.
    The home into which she stepped that evening was a very different one from the quiet little white house she had left. The building was massive and showy, a great pile of masonry set in the midst of one of the most fashionable semi-suburban localities. The evidences of lavish spending of money were everywhere. There was a daring about effects and colorings that pleased Constance’s present state of mind, though she had been brought up as a conservative of the conservatives.
    There was a fountain splashing in the center of the great reception hall, and wide stairs ascended at the farther end, turning at either side and going up to galleries screened from below by fine Moorish carvings and latticed casement windows. The rooms opened off on either side, making the distance seem vast and the extent of the house almost unlimited. The thick Persian rugs, the myriads of palms, the tinkling of the falling water, the faint perfume of English violets from an immense bowl of purple that stood on a pillar of the stairs, the soft lights of stained glass from a costly window on the first broad stair landing, the glimpses of great paintings and costly furnishings through the open doorways on every hand, the vista of a great library with book-lined walls and many low, soft chairs in scarlet leather, the well-kept fire behind its bright brass fender—everything bespoke ease and luxury and lack of any need for care or thought.
    The young girl who was the center of all this luxury, the one daughter and child of the house, around whom, and for whom, and by the will of whom everything moved, was a sweet, bright, cheerful little thing with a voice as fresh as a schoolboy’s and eyes that had not yet grown weary of the world. Her face