She coloured up for a moment, and then proceeded to explain herself.
"In my poor mother's lifetime," she went on, "her friends were not always my friends, too.

Now I have lost her, my heart turns for comfort to the people she liked.

She liked you.

Try to be friends with me, Drusilla, if you can." To any rightly-constituted mind, the motive thus acknowledged was simply shocking.

Here in Christian England was a young woman in a state of bereavement, with so little idea of where to look for true comfort, that she actually expected to find it among her mother's friends! Here was a relative of mine, awakened to a sense of her shortcomings towards others, under the influence, not of conviction and duty, but of sentiment and impulse! Most deplorable to think of--but, still, suggestive of something hopeful, to a person of my experience in plying the good work.