This scant sympathy Ethel found to be the usual tone among her acquaintances. St. Jude's got a new rector and a new idol, and the Stanhope affair was relegated to the limbo of things "it was proper to forget."
So the weeks of the long winter went by, and Ethel in the joy and hope of her own love-life naturally put out of her mind the sorrow of lives she could no longer help or influence. Indeed, as to Dora, there were frequent reports of her marvelous social success in Paris; and Ethel did not doubt Stanhope had found some everlasting gospel of holy work to comfort his desolation. And then also "Each day brings its petty dust, Our soon-choked souls to fill; And we forget because we must, And not because we will."
One evening when May with heavy clouds and slant rains was making the city as miserable as possible, Ethel had a caller. His card bore a name quite unknown, and his appearance gave no clew to his identity.
"Mr. Edmonds?" she said interrogatively.
"Are you Miss Ethel Rawdon?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Mr. Basil Stanhope told me to put this parcel in your hands."
"Oh, Mr. Stanhope! I am glad to hear from him. Where is he now?"
"We buried him yesterday. He died last Sunday as the bells were ringing for church--pneumonia, miss. While reading the ser-vice over a poor young man he had nursed many weeks he took cold. The poor will miss him sorely."
"DEAD!" She looked aghast at the speaker, and again ejaculated the pitiful, astounding word.
"Good evening, miss. I promised him to return at once to the work he left me to do." And he quietly departed, leaving Ethel standing with the parcel in her hands. She ran upstairs and locked it away. Just then she could not bear to open it.
"And it is hardly twelve months since he was married," she sobbed. "Oh, Ruth, Ruth, it is too cruel!"
"Dear," answered Ruth, "there is no death to such a man as Basil Stanhope."
"He was so young, Ruth."
"I know. 'His high-born brothers called him hence' at the age of twenty-nine, but "'It is not growing like a tree, In bulk, doth make men better be; Or standing like an oak three hundred year, To fall at last, dry, bald and sear: A lily of a day Is fairer far in May; Although it fall and die that night, It was the plant and flower of light.'"