By the Light of the Soul

Excerpt: ...would do something for the poor little thing myself, but I haven't any money now, and Aunt Maria would, and Uncle Henry, and Aunt Eunice, but they-" All at once Maria, who was hardly more than a child herself, and who had been in reality frightfully wrought up over the piteous plight of the other child, lost control of herself. She began to cry. She put her handkerchief to her face and sobbed helplessly. "The poor little thing! oh, the poor little thing!" she panted, "with nobody in the world to do anything for her, and her own people so terribly wicked. I-can't bear it!" The first thing she knew, Maria was having a large, soft cloak folded around her, and somebody was leading her gently to the door. She heard a murmured good-night, to which she did not respond except by a sob, and was led, with her arm rather closely held, along the sidewalk to her own door. At the door George Ramsey took her hand, and she felt something pressed softly into it. "If you will please buy what the poor little thing needs to make her comfortable," he whispered. "Thank you," Maria replied, faintly. She began to be ashamed of her emotion. "You must not think that my mother and I were knowing to this," George Ramsey said. "We are really such very distant relations that the name alone is the only bond between us; still, on general principles, if the name had been different, I would do what I could. Such suffering is terrible. You must not think us hard-hearted, Miss Edgham." Maria looked up at the young fellow's face, upon which an electric light shone fully, and it was a good face to see. She could not at all reconcile it with her memory of the rather silly little boy with the patched trousers, with whom she had discoursed over the garden fence. This face was entirely masterly, dark and clean-cut, with fine eyes, and a distinctly sweet expression about the mouth which he had...