Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. FINDING. " But time has taught me this—if hope's a cloud, Changing its color till it melt away, Fear is as fanciful. Our hearts are cowed By their own conjuring. The riper day Finds hopes and fears but battlements of snow. Wind-built, sun-gilt, which one night's rain lays low." —T. W. Parsons. MURIEL soon saw, or fancied she saw, that May was over-fatiguing herself in her effort to be in two places, if not exactly at once, yet too nearly so for her own comfort and convenience. She would not discuss the matter with May, but when, at the end of three or four days, she found that Miss Post was ready to begin sewing for her, she proceeded promptly to carry out a plan which she had been revolving in her mind ever since May's first talk about the seamstress, and which seemed to her to be her first " opportunity." She ascertained that Miss Post spent her mornings in her own home, and of this May had given her the address, not suspecting that she meant to do more than engage the seamstress for some temporary work. But Muriel had a larger design than this, and although it presented difficulties, she silenced them with the thought that in every plan and arrangement there is something to be "made straight," in order to its carrying out. Muriel had gone through a sort of secondary " engagement " with her great-aunt Matilda, concerning mourning. Mrs. Hardcastle's idea, freely imparted to her niece, was that, in view of " all she owed to heir grandpapa," no black could be too " dead," no crape too costly, or profusely used, as a mark of gratitude and respect, if not of love. " My dear child," she said, " you really must have a veil. I am surprised that you have the slightest doubt about it! The best English crape, of course, and reaching to the top of the lowe...