They will point at you, as the man who has lost all that he prized; and she has stolen it, whom he prized more than what was stolen! And he, the accursed miscreant——. But no, it can never be! Madge is as true as Heaven!
Yet she is not there: whence comes the light that is to cheer you?
----Your children?
Ay, your children,—your little Nelly,—your noble Frank,—they are yours,—doubly, trebly, tenfold yours, now that she, their mother, is a mother no more to them forever!
Ay, close your doors; shut out the world; draw close your curtains; fold them to your heart,—your crushed, bleeding, desolate heart! Lay your forehead to the soft cheek of your noble boy;—beware, beware how you dampen that damask cheek with your scalding tears: yet you cannot help it; they fall—great drops—a river of tears, as you gather him convulsively to your bosom!
"Father, why do you cry so?" says Frank, with the tears of dreadful sympathy starting from those eyes of childhood.
----"Why, papa?"—mimes little Nelly.
----Answer them, if you dare! Try it;—what words—blundering, weak words—choked with agony—leading nowhere—ending in new and convulsive clasps of your weeping, motherless children!
Had she gone to her grave, there would have been a holy joy, a great and swelling grief indeed,—but your poor heart would have found a rest in the quiet churchyard; and your feelings, rooted in that cherished grave, would have stretched up toward Heaven their delicate leaves, and caught the dews of His grace, who watcheth the lilies. But now,—with your heart cast underfoot, or buffeted on the lips of a lying world,—finding no shelter and no abiding place!—alas, we do guess at infinitude only by suffering!
----Madge, Madge! can this be so? Are you not still the same sweet, guileless child of Heaven?