Mrs. Valiant regretfully realized that she could do no good by staying longer, that any further importunity would only increase her neighbor’s resistance and resentment. So she sorrowfully took her departure, having failed in a mission which, in truth, she had feared would prove unsuccessful.

Left alone in the cottage, Mrs. Dismal Forebodings brooded on the disastrous news, and the more she brooded the worse it seemed. What a cruel blow dealt by fate to permit that girl to return just now, who, if she had married Craven as she ought to have done, would now be as disgraced and humiliated and wretched as her mother-in-law, and a convenient scapegoat on whom the family could have heaped their reproaches. But now, instead of that, here she was, gloriously free, richly provided for, and with an honorable new name. “It’s scandalous!” sobbed Mrs. Dismal. “The injustice of life! The hammer blows of fate! A calamity of calamities!”

She sat there brooding bitterly for perhaps half an hour, when she heard a light tap on the door of the cottage, and with a sickening sense of foreboding she called out sourly, “Who is there?”

“It is I, your niece, dear Aunt. May I come in?” And with that the door opened and Grace and Glory stepped into the cheerless room.

In spite of herself Mrs. Dismal Forebodings looked with eager curiosity at the girl who had once been Much-Afraid. She saw it was quite true what Mrs. Valiant had told her, there was a great difference in her. She was so straight, and walked with such ease and poise, that it gave one the impression that she was much taller than before. And now that the unsightly, deformed mouth was healed, and she could look unshrinkingly and without self-consciousness into the face of others, she was very unlike the ugly creature of former days. “Yet in another way,” thought Mrs. Dismal Forebodings, “she is not at all out of the ordinary. Among a crowd there would be nothing to single her out, except perhaps the expression of quiet, steady happiness on her face and the light in her eyes.”

Grace and Glory hesitated a moment at the door, and then, as her aunt offered not a single word of greeting, she walked quietly toward the grey, bent figure crouched in the rocking chair beside the stove, and stooping down, gently kissed her aunt’s cheek.

Mrs. Dismal Forebodings recoiled almost as though a reptile had approached her, and putting out her hands, pushed her niece away.

“There is no need for insincere tokens of affection, Much-Afraid,” she said coldly. “I can dispense with a kiss from you.”

Her niece looked at her compassionately, but only said gently: “I can understand just how you feel, dear Aunt. I know that I was always sadly lacking in love and in attention to your wishes. But I hear that you have experienced much sorrow since last we saw one another, and my heart aches for you. I long to be able to help in some way, or at least to share your sorrow.” She paused a moment and then added shyly: “I have been changed you know, since I went away, and have learned to love. I have a new name now, and, I hope, a new nature.”