Truth, and truth alone, is safe and omnipotent: "The eternal days of God are hers." Man may weave, but she will undeceive; man may arrange, but God will dispose.
CHAPTER LVII.
I told my father the history of my youth and womanhood, of my marriage and widowhood, with feelings similar to those with which I poured out my soul into the compassionate bosom of my Heavenly Father. He listened, pitied, wept over, and then consoled me.
"He must prove himself worthy of so sacred a trust," said he, clasping me to his bosom with all a father's tenderness, and all a mother's love, "before I ever commit it to his keeping. Never again, with my consent, shall you be given back to his arms, till 'the seed of the woman has bruised the serpent's head.'"
"I will never leave you again, dear father, under any circumstances, whatever they may be. Rest assured, that come weal, come woe, we will never be separated. Not even for a husband's unclouded confidence, would I forsake a father's sacred, new-found love."
"We must wait, and hope, and trust, my beloved daughter. Every thing will work together for the good of those that love God. I believe that now, fully, reverentially. Sooner or later all the ways of Providence will be justified to man, and made clear as the noonday sun."
He looked up to heaven, and his fine countenance beamed with holy resignation and Christian faith. Oh! how I loved this dear, excellent, noble father! Every hour, nay, every moment I might say, my filial love and reverence increased. My feelings were so new, so overpowering, I could not analyze them. They were sweet as the strains of Edith's harp, yet grand as the roaring of ocean's swelling waves. The bliss of confidence, the rapture of repose, the sublimity of veneration, the tenderness of love, all blended like the dyes of the rainbow, and spanned with an arch of peace the retreating clouds of my soul.
"When shall we go to Grandison Place?" he asked. "I long to pour a father's gratitude into the ear of your benefactress. I long to visit the grave of my Rosalie."
"To-morrow, to-day,—now, dear father, whenever you speak the word; provided we are not separated, I do not mind how soon."