nt
through their effect upon the future and eternal,--as he renounced a
senseless belief in the very names of _chance_ and _accident_, and
yielded to the conviction that the simplest as the gravest occurrences
all tend to lay some stone in the great architectural edifice which
every man is building for his own dwelling-place in the hereafter,--his
trials, by some wondrous transmutation, wore a holy aspect, and gently
into his unfolding spirit stole the comforting assurance that those very
trials might be the fittest, the strongest, the _appointed_ instruments
to hew out the pathway he panted to tread, and carve for him a future
which could never have been wrought by such tools as the velvety hands
of prosperity hold in their feeble grasp.

The morbid melancholy into which Maurice had fallen, and which deepened
with his vain pondering over the mysterious fate of Madeleine, rolled
from his spirit before the breath of hope,--hope breathed through
sunshine, from the lips of a woman whose sympathetic voice, tender
looks, and quick comprehension of his emotions insensibly melted away
reserve, and drew out all his confidence. He could talk to Mrs. Walton
of Madeleine with an absence of _reticence_, an unchecked gush of
feeling, which would not have been possible when he conversed with
Ronald, or with any one but a woman, _and such a woman_.

Far from advising him, as a worldly-wise counsellor would have done, to
struggle against a passion which did not promise to prove fortunate, she
bade him cherish the image of the one he so ardently loved with perfect
trust, that if that woman were indeed his _other self_,--that _separate
half_ which makes man's full complement,--he would, in spite of all
adverse circumstances, be drawn to her, by mysterious and invisible
cords, until their union was consummated.

Mrs. Walton entertained the not irrational belief that as "either sex
alone is _half_ itself," and "each fulfils defects in each," there was
created for every male soul some feminine spirit, whose heart was
capable of responding to the finest pulses of his; one who could meet
his largest requirements; one who could alone render his being perfect,
his true manhood complete; one whom he might never meet on earth, and
yet who lived for him. This great truth (for as such he accepted it) was
a glorious revelation to Maurice. He cast out the remembrance that
Madeleine had said she loved another, or only recalled her declaration
to fe