“’Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name! thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven!’ My soul is deeply moved for thee in this thy time of trial. The good God chasteneth thee now—now is the hour of thy great tribulation come; now thy life-demons wrestle in thee, with the love, the good the Father has sent to redeem thee. Be strong! Ah, be strong even now, thou child of many sorrows, and thou shalt yet find grace and peace in acceptance with Him. Meanwhile I can but pray for thee and with thee. I weary Heaven with supplications, that out of this travail a great and glorious soul may be born in the humility of love, for light, eternal light.
“Come to me this evening, that I may take that throbbing heart upon my bosom. I may soothe and calm you, but I cannot give you rest—rest comes only from the Father! You ask me to be for you, forever, ‘Marie, mother!’ I can be to you, forever, your friend
Marie.”
“Ah! ha! that will do it!” she said in a low chuckling tone, as she rapidly folded and directed the letter; “though he might take the alarm at this if he were cool, yet there’s no danger now! It will no doubt shock him a little, but he has learned to believe in me, and in his present excited state he has deified me almost into an object of worship; and any suspicion he might feel he would only blame himself for. Ah! this will do! it shall go instantly! Here!” she said, turning sharply to the child, “Here! get up there, put on your bonnet, and take this letter! You know how to deliver it, and where! Come, up with you!”
“But, mother,” said the child, as she slowly lifted herself half-erect, “I don’t feel like it—I’m not well! You hurt me!”
“Nonsense!” said the mother, harshly; “go take a bath, and do it quickly too! You’ll feel well enough! This letter must go, and shall go! Get along, I say, and do what I tell you!”
The child dragged herself slowly out of the room.
“That little wretch will torment me to death!”
The letter was despatched and reached its destination.
Manton, whose excitement had continued, without the slightest diminution, to return upon him, in paroxysm after paroxysm, seized upon this last letter with the famishing eagerness of a man who looks for strength—for spiritual consoling. He read it with suffused and swollen eyes; he scarcely saw what he read, so much had his vision been dizzied and obscured by weeping. But those last words did indeed shock and thrill him. He was strangely startled, and for a moment they seemed to open to him an appalling and terrific gulf of falsehood, more hideous than yawning hell.