eat elevation and purity of
character to be familiarly known and spoken of as living under a cloud
of religious gloom; and it was simply regarded as one more mysterious
instance of the workings of that infinite decree which denied to them
the special illumination of the Spirit.

When Mrs. Marvyn had drawn Mary with her into her room, she seemed like
a person almost in frenzy. She shut and bolted the door, drew her to the
foot of the bed, and, throwing her arms round her, rested her hot and
throbbing forehead on her shoulder. She pressed her thin hand over her
eyes, and then, suddenly drawing back, looked her in the face as one
resolved to speak something long suppressed. Her soft brown eyes had a
flash of despairing wildness in them, like that of a hunted animal
turning in its death-struggle on its pursuer.

"Mary," she said, "I can't help it,--don't mind what I say, but I must
speak or die! Mary, I cannot, will not, be resigned!--it is all hard,
unjust, cruel!--to all eternity I will say so! To me there is no
goodness, no justice, no mercy in anything! Life seems to me the most
tremendous doom that can be inflicted on a helpless being! _What had we
done_, that it should be sent upon us? Why were we made to love so, to
hope so,--our hearts so full of feeling, and all the laws of Nature
marching over us,--never stopping for our agony? Why, we can suffer so
in this life that we had better never have been born!

"But, Mary, think what a moment life is! think of those awful ages of
eternity! and then think of all God's power and knowledge used on the
lost to make them suffer! think that all but the merest fragment of
mankind have gone into this,--are in it now! The number of the elect is
so small we can scarce count them for anything! Think what noble minds,
what warm, generous hearts, what splendid natures are wrecked and thrown
away by thousands and tens of thousands! How we love each other! how our
hearts weave into each other! how more than glad we should be to die for
each other! And all this ends--O God, how must it end?--Mary! it isn't
_my_ sorrow only! What right have I to mourn? Is _my_ son any better
than any other mother's son? Thousands of thousands, whose mothers loved
them as I love mine, are gone there!--Oh, my wedding-day! Why did they
rejoice? Brides should wear mourning,--the bells should toll for every
wedding; every new family is built over this awful pit of despair, and
only one in a thousand escapes!