everence evermore do lie."

"Thank God, dear Henry," said her mother, "she is not at all events an
idiot. Children," said she, "I trust you will remember your father's
advice, and bear this--this----." But here the heart and strength of
the mother herself were overcome, and she was sinking down when her son
caught her ere she fell, and carried her out in his arms, accompanied by
Maria and Agnes.

It would be difficult for any pen to paint the distraction of her
father, thus placed in a state of divided apprehension between his
daughter and his wife.

"Oh, my child, my child," he exclaimed, "Perhaps in the midst of this
misery, your mother may be dying! May the God of all consolation support
you and her! What, oh what will become of us!"

"Well, well," his daughter went on; "life's a fearful thing that can
work such anges; but why may we not as well pass at once from youth to
old age as from happiness to misery? Here we are both old; ay, and if we
are gray it is less with age than affliction--that's one comfort--I am
young enough to be beautiful yet; but age, when it comes prematurely on
the youthful, as it often does--thanks to treachery and disappointment,
ay, and thanks to a thousand causes which we all know but don't wish to
think of; age, I say, when it comes prematurely on the youthful, is
just like a new and unfinished house that is suffered to fall into
ruin--desolation, naked, and fresh, and glaring--without the reverence
and grandeur of antiquity. Yes--yes--yes; but there is another cause;
and that must be whispered only to the uttermost depths of silence--of
silence; for silence is the voice of God. That word--that word! Oh,
how I shudder to think of it! And who will pity me when I acknowledge
it--there is one--one only--who will mourn for my despair and the fate,
foreordained and predestined, of one whom he loved--that is my papa--my
papa only--my papa only; for he knows that I am a _castaway_---A
CAST-AWAY!"

These words were uttered with an energy of manner and a fluency of
utterance which medical men know to be strongly characteristic of
insanity, unless indeed where the malady is silent and moping. The
afflicted old man now discovered that his daughter's mind had, in
addition to her disappointment, sunk under the frightful and merciless
dogma, which we trust will soon cease to darken and distort the
beneficent character of God. Indeed it might have been evident to him
before that in looking upon h