The anguish of the sufferer’s mind was to be read upon his despairing countenance, and as his weeping mother, now, indeed, with pardon on her lips, bent over him, he murmured: “Lost, lost, there is no hope for me.”
“There is always hope for the truly penitent,” replied Mrs. Sidney, through her tears—“hope in a Saviour—hope in our Maker’s mercy.”
The dying man turned upon his pillow, for a few minutes he was silent, though it is believed he joined in the fervent prayers which arose
from the lips of his mother and cousin; and let us hope, though tardy his repentance, it was accepted. It was evident he was sinking fast, and before sunrise he expired.
Almost his last words were, “William, yes, William will atone with the money for the wrong I have done. Yet he does not seem so glad as I was when I became a lord!”
It was all over, and William, the next heir, was indeed the lord of that wide domain, and of his cousin’s accumulated riches; but his first act was a fervent prayer for divine assistance. Knowing, as he did, that at no time is it more needed than, as our Litany beautifully expresses it, “in all time of our wealth.”
That he did make amends for his cousin’s avarice by a wise as well as generous use of his wealth, my young readers will readily believe; and William, Lord Sereton, was as much beloved as his cousin had been disliked. And Mrs. Sidney, grieving as she did, notwithstanding his faults, for the loss of her only child, found no small consolation in the affection of that family, whom his death had raised from many cares to rank and affluence.
THE TRIAL OF ADVERSITY.
“Blessed are the meek.”—St. Matthew v. 5.
“He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.” St. Luke xviii. 14.
“You are quite a contradiction, that you are!” was the exclamation of Harriet Mannering to her sister. And she continued, “You are not too proud to wear a cotton dress and coarse straw bonnet, and even to be seen in them by the very persons who knew us when we had a carriage; and yet you will not accept these presents from Mrs. Somerton.”