I. The May Chapter

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Then there had been a foolish, bitter quarrel at the end of that golden summer. Leslie had gone away in anger, afterwards he had written, but Margaret Lloyd, still in the grasp of her pride and resentment, had sent a harsh answer. No more letters came; Leslie Gray never returned; and one day Margaret wakened to the realization that she had put love out of her life for ever. She knew it would never be hers again; and from that moment her feet were turned from youth to walk down the valley of shadow to a lonely, eccentric age.

Many years later she heard of Leslie's marriage; then came news of his death, after a life that had not fulfilled his dreams for him. Nothing more she had heard or known--nothing to this day, when she had seen his daughter pass her by unseeing in the beech hollow.

"His daughter! And she might have been MY daughter," murmured the Old Lady. "Oh, if I could only know her and love her--and perhaps win her love in return! But I cannot. I could not have Leslie Gray's daughter know how poor I am-- how low I have been brought. I could not bear that. And to think she is living so near me, the darling--just up the lane and over the hill. I can see her go by every day-- I can have that dear pleasure, at least. But oh, if I could only do something for her--give her some little pleasure! It would be such a delight."

When the Old Lady happened to go into her spare room that evening, she saw from it a light shining through a gap in the trees on the hill. She knew that it shone from the Spencers' spare room. So it was Sylvia's light. The Old Lady stood in the darkness and watched it until it went out--watched it with a great sweetness breathing in her heart, such as risen from old rose-leaves when they are stirred. She fancied Sylvia moving about her room, brushing and braiding her long, glistening hair--laying aside her little trinkets and girlish adornments--making her simple preparations for sleep. When the light went out the Old Lady pictured a slight white figure kneeling by the window in the soft starshine, and the Old Lady knelt down then and there and said her own prayers in fellowship. She said the simple form of words she had always used; but a new spirit seemed to inspire them; and she finished with a new petition--"Let me think of something I can do for her, dear Father--some little, little thing that I can do for her."

The Old Lady had slept in the same room all her life--the one looking north into the spruces--and loved it; but the next day she moved into the spare room without a regret. It was to be her room after this; she must be where she could see Sylvia's light, she put the bed where she could lie in it and look at that earth star which had suddenly shone across the twilight shadows of her heart. She felt very happy, she had not felt happy for many years; but now a strange, new, dream-like interest, remote from the harsh realities of her existence, but none the less comforting and alluring, had entered into her life. Besides, she had thought of something she could do for Sylvia--"a little, little thing" that might give her pleasure.