The vast grief she meant, and Miss Isabella understood her. 'Yes, truly there are times when all we have trusted in falls—falls away and leaves us alone.'
'And hating the humbug!' cried Angela, though even as she spoke she was startled at her words; but the hard wretchedness of the past days, when all she had been wont to hear of as comfort seemed but child's play to the intensity of her grief, had exacerbated her against the whole system in which she had been bred, so that the very sight of Clement brought an angry sense of mockery.
Miss Bridget was shocked at the language; but her sister understood better. 'Yes, Bridget, the dear child is feeling the desolation that sooner or later comes to all who have been content with unrealities! Most cruel, but better than the delusion.'
Bridget quoted, 'He feedeth on ashes; a deceived heart hath turned him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?'
'Ashes! ashes indeed!' cried Angela passionately, as she looked at the black paper with grey crumbling edges that had once been a song, where she thought she met Charlie's heart. 'The more one cares the more hateful it all grows!' and she crushed the fragments into tinder with the paper as she spoke.
'Dear, dear girl!' cried Isabella Hepburn; 'even as you crush that paper, throw aside all these vain shows that cannot profit, and simply cast yourself where Help is to be found!'
The real tender kindness, the promise of help, attracted the heart weary of its misery, and yet spurning all the love and help that had longed to aid all these days. She could in some strange way open to a fresh person when the heart was closed to her own kindred; besides, it was better to have the circumstances blamed than herself, and the effect of the good lady's appeal was to make her groan, with tightly compressed hands, 'Oh! no one can tell—no one can reach near the depth of this unhappiness. Think what I have done! and what it has cost me! And then it all seems—words—words—words—'
'Words—yes, till you find Him only in whom is Power to comfort. Is he not rousing your heart by this utter destitution and powerlessness to comfort, so as to bring you at once to lay the load on Him?'
The fervour of her voice carried force; and Angela said, 'If I could—Not to find it all words again—'
'Poor child! Did He ever turn from such as come to Him? Take your Bible in your hand, and at the foot of the Cross—not the material cross, of which you have been taught to make a plaything, but the spiritual Cross—cast your sorrows and your sins; believe, and be healed.'