, and had
instantly started some quite irrelevant topic of conversation. Abishai
doubtless knew much about the brother of his wife, but Zarah shrank
from questioning him; from his fierce impetuosity of character, he was
not one to draw out the confidence of a gentle and timid girl. Zarah
almost felt as if her uncle disliked, and for some reason which she
understood not, regarded her with mingled pity and contempt. Thus the
daughter of Abner, cut off from all means of gaining reliable
information, was thrown back on her own conjectures. A vague doubt
which had lately arisen in Zarah's mind, but which had always
heretofore been repelled as treason to a parent's memory, was given
form and substance by the faint exclamation which grief had wrung from
Hadassah, "_Must I know that misery twice._" Many slight circumstances
then recurred to Zarah's memory to confirm her suspicions, especially
the anguish which Hadassah had betrayed at the burial of Solomona, when
a strange pang of envy had seemed to intensify that of bereavement.
Zarah was as one bending lower and lower over that pit of which she
longed, yet dreaded, to sound the depths, straining her eyes to
penetrate the darkness, while trembling to think what horrors that
darkness might hide.

"Is it possible that my father may yet be breathing on earth,
living--the life of an apostate!" The idea haunted Zarah like a
spectre. There was only one hope which had power to lay it: "If
living, he may be spared for repentance. God is merciful; He judgeth
not severely; He delighteth in receiving His wanderers back. Did not
Nathan say to penitent David, 'Thou shalt not surely die;' was not even
the guilty Manasseh restored to his throne? Oh, the son of the pious
Hadassah, a woman of such faith and prayer, can never be lost!" After
such meditations, the burdened heart of Zarah would find relief in
fervent supplications for her father. Her filial affection came to the
aid of her religious obedience. "God will not hear prayers," thought
Zarah, "from one in whose heart an idol is enshrined. For my father's
sake, as well as my own, let me strive to give unreserved obedience to
my Lord."

So, endeavouring to overcome one grief by the help of another, and to
cast a veil over both, Zarah passed weary day after day, letting no
murmur mar her offering of meek submission. She would even speak
cheerfully to Hadassah, and sing to her songs of Zion, which the aged
lady delighted