"Dare I hope that your cherished daughter does not withhold her consent?" asked the young man, with trembling voice, as he pleadingly, yet tenderly, took the hand of the maiden.
Candid as she always was, Molly answered softly: "In restoring my little sister to sight, you have made me very happy; yet I must frankly confess that it is not gratitude alone which binds me to you. Another voice speaks to me in the depths of my soul,—the voice of affection; it whispers me that you deserve my confidence. Could you possibly deceive me?"
Then the young man raised his hand, as if to take a solemn oath.
"Never! never!" with clear and loud, yet solemn and tender tone, he said. "Nothing shall ever part me from thee, no change in destiny shall sever me from thy side! I feel within myself the strength to offer everything up for thee, to conquer all things through my love for thee! Thy holy confidence in me shall never be deceived! Undying love and tenderness for thee, my Molly, shall ever fill the heart in which thou hast trusted!"
He nobly kept his plighted word; and Molly never had any cause to repent of the confidence which she had reposed in him.
O'Neil lived to attain a great age. He lived to see little Kitty married to an excellent young man, who managed his estate with the greatest care, when he grew too old and weak to attend to it himself. And when at last the death-angel came to call him to a higher life above, he blessed with his dying voice his sons, his daughters, and his grandchildren. But the last pressure of the stiffening hand, the last words from the lips that were to open no more on earth, were for his own Molly.
"Molly," he painfully sighed, "I can see thy sweet face no longer, for my eyes are darkened by the night of death, but thy image still floats before my parting soul. Thou wert my consolation and support when the hand of the Lord rested heavily upon me. Thy confidence that all would yet be well never wavered; thy gentleness and thy loveliness touched and softened the heart of the long defiant one, who had before scorned all the warnings sent from Heaven, and changed his angry hatred into wonder and love!
"Next to God, from whom all good gifts come, I thank thee, my dearly beloved child, that the rough and thorny path of my life was changed into an earthly paradise, which leads to heaven! Molly! my Molly! may thy children resemble thee, and make thee as happy as thou hast made thy father!"