----"Why, papa?"--mimes little Nelly.
----Answer them, if you dare! Try it;--what words--blundering, weak
words--choked with agony--leading nowhere--ending in new and convulsive
clasps of your weeping, motherless children!
Had she gone to her grave, there would have been a holy joy, a great and
swelling grief indeed,--but your poor heart would have found a rest in
the quiet churchyard; and your feelings, rooted in that cherished grave,
would have stretched up toward Heaven their delicate leaves, and caught
the dews of His grace, who watcheth the lilies. But now,--with your
heart cast underfoot, or buffeted on the lips of a lying world,--finding
no shelter and no abiding place!--alas, we do guess at infinitude only
by suffering!
----Madge, Madge! can this be so? Are you not still the same sweet,
guileless child of Heaven?
VII.
_Peace._
It is a dream,--fearful, to be sure, but only a dream! Madge _is_ true.
That soul is honest; it could not be otherwise. God never made it to be
false; He never made the sun for darkness.
And before the evening has waned to midnight, sweet day has broken on
your gloom;--Madge is folded to your bosom, sobbing fearfully,--not for
guilt, or any shadow of guilt, but for the agony she reads upon your
brow, and in your low sighs.
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