"But that is very different," they said.
Only once she lost her temper. There was a sort of family conclave of aunts and relatives, and they had beset her sorely. At last she turned upon them suddenly, and asked:
"Are you Christians? Do you believe there is a God?"
"Why, certainly. Do you think we are heathen?"
"Why talk, then, like heathen, and act like infidels? If it's the thing in the fashionable world to marry a trusted servant of a human government, how much better must it be to marry a servant of the King of All! I honor my friend because she marries the man she loves, and I shall marry the one I love. I am of age—I have chosen my lot. Mark my words! you will yet be proud of the one whom you now so despise; while the one you wish me to marry will cover his own and the names of all connected with him with shame"; and she left them to recover from this bombshell of truth, as best they might.
But the patient gentleness which she usually manifested at length won even their obdurate hearts. Her father was the first to relent, and was finally brought, by Lottie's irresistible witchery, quite over on her side. But, in her mother's case, there was only partial resignation to a great but inevitable misfortune. Mrs. Marsden was a sincere idolater of the world for which she lived.
In Aunt Jane, Lottie had a stanch ally, and a sympathizing and comforting helper.
But the postman, who brought, with increasing frequency, letters that were big and heavy, like the writer, was the man whom Lottie most doted on in all the city.
With the whole energy of her forceful, practical nature, she trained herself for her work, as Hemstead was training himself for his. And when, a year later, she gave him her hand at the sacred altar, it was not a helpless hand.
Years have passed. Mr. and Mrs. Hemstead are the chief social, refining, and Christianizing influences of a growing Western town. They have the confidence and sympathy of the entire community, and are people of such force that they make themselves felt in every department of life. They are shaping and ennobling many characters, and few days pass in which Lottie does not lay up in memory some good deed, though she never stops to count her hoard. But, in gladness, she will learn in God's good time that such deeds are the riches that have no wings.