"I think it is a case which my philanthropy, as you choose to call it, cannot reach. I know that her people would gladly have her come home, and there is no reason why they should be ashamed of either her or her daughter; but she manages to keep them in complete ignorance of her circumstances, and also, I strongly suspect, of her whereabouts."
"Why don't you write to them?"
"She has forbidden it, and in such a way as to make me feel that it would be a breach of honor to disregard her wishes. No, nothing can be done at present. But she is as frail as a reed, and her body, in spite of her will power, will break down under the pressure, and then——"
"Well?"
"Then she will die—that is all."
It seems hard, at first thought, to bring the sorrows of older people—and sorrows, too, for which, as the words of Mr. Allen would indicate the above to be, there seems no earthly cure—into a book for girls; but perhaps it is, after all, a truer kindness to let them find out, while there is yet time, that life is a thing of earnest and real import, and that the impossible ideas of a romantic world where a few sorrows come simply as contrast, and then vanish forever, leaving the heroes and heroines surrounded by an everlasting halo of happiness and prosperity—which so many of the lighter novels teach—are more injurious than any statistics will ever show. They give views of life which, if followed out, as in the case of Constance Van Orton, are apt to end in sorrow and despair.
But the saddest life must have some joy in it, and Mrs. Alroy probably had many happy hours, when she enjoyed the sunshine, or, in more sober moods, the gentle patter of the rain on the roof, her books (to which the poorest of those who live in our large cities can have access through the public libraries), and, above all, the companionship of her daughter, who was really that most remarkable of characters, a child good, and even pious, without priggishness or the slightest taint of affectation.
And when all is thought and felt and suffered, above earth's joys and woes and hopes and dark despair is God, the eternal Good, and
What to us is darkness, to Him is light,
And the end He knoweth."