"
This was precisely Sister Cecilia's attitude towards her small world of
Stagholme, after the news of the young Squire's death had cast a gloom
over the whole neighbourhood.
"Ah!" she would say to some honest cottage mother who had more true
feeling in her rough little finger than Sister Cecilia possessed in her
whole heart. "These trials are sent to us for our good. The ways of
Providence are strange, Mrs. Martin--strange to us now."
"Yes, miss; that they be," Mrs. Martin replied, looking at her with the
hard and far-seeing gaze of a poor mother who has known trouble in its
least romantic form. And Sister Cecilia, with that blindness which comes
from systematically closing the eyes to the earthly side of earthly
things, never realised that the small change of sympathy is often
slightly aggravating.
At this period she took to calling Jem Agar her "poor boy." The grave
seems to have the power of completely altering the past, and with persons
of the stamp of Sister Cecilia death appears not only to wipe out all
sin, but to impair the memory of the living to such an extent that the
individuality of the deceased is no longer recognisable.
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