"I took my father's name when he cast me off."
[CHAPTER XX.]
LETTERS FROM THE PASTOR.
"HOW true it is," said Marion, as, after she had taken Mrs. Douglass to her home, she was seated in her own parlor,—"how true that the sins of the parents are visited on the children! God's threatenings are as faithful as his promises. I cannot be thankful enough that I have had a pious ancestry, and that their prayers may be answered in blessings on their descendants. How little that father realized that, in allowing his son and daughter the indulgence of every caprice, they were sowing seed which would spring up to their own sorrow and shame! How little even Mrs. Cheriton realizes that she is pursuing the same evil course with her boy, and that from being her idol he will become her tyrant! I promised Mrs. Douglass that I would be a friend to the youthful mother; indeed she urged that Mr. Angus had advised her to confide her story to me, and had been confident that I would not forsake her. I will try to keep my promise."
Mr. Angus sailed early in June, and, except a notice in the papers of the safe arrival of the steamship in Liverpool, no news from him had been received. Mrs. Asbury wrote Marion that her long-promised visit would be paid the last week in the month, and that she expected her niece to return with her to Grantbury. At the close was the following hurried postscript:—
"I have opened my letter to add that Mr. Asbury has just received a brief communication from our dear pastor. He is well, preached on Sunday in London, both morning and afternoon, sent affectionate regards to all friends including you and Ethel, of course."
Marion read the message with a heightened color. Her heart rebelled against being remembered in this general way; then, reading again, was pleased to see that this was only her aunt's rendering of his message. She fell into a revery concerning the absent one. "He told me I was the only confidant he ever had. In aunty's last letter she narrated exactly what he told her in regard to the triumphant death of a friend. She has no idea that I knew his sister, nor of the painful events of his early life. I will not betray his confidence; and yet it will be a trial to me to keep anything of interest to myself from my dear, kind aunty. I wonder whether he will write me, and when."
She was interrupted by James, who brought the morning paper.
"Nothing else?" she asked, in a tone of disappointment.
"Nothing at all."