“There now, Agnes, you are to sleep with mo to-night: but I want my papa. Papa, I want you.”
Her father stood forward, his mild eyes beaming with an expression of delight and happiness.
“I am here, my sweet child.”
“You ought to be a proud man, papa; a proud man: although I say it, that ought not to say it, you are father to the most beautiful girl in Europe. Charles Osborne has traveled Europe, and can find none at all so beautiful as the Fawn of Springvale, and so he is coming home one of these days to marry me, because, you know, because he could find none else so beautiful. If he had—if he had—you know—you may be assured, I would not be the girl of his choice. Yet I would marry him still, if it were not for one thing; and that is—that I am foredoomed; a reprobate and a cast-away; predestined—predestined—and so I would not wish to drag him to hell along with me; I shall therefore act the heroic part, and refuse him. Still it is something—oh it is much—and I am proud of it, not only on my own account, but on his, to be the most beautiful girl in Europe! I am proud of it, because he would not marry if I were not.”
Oh unhappy, but affectionate mourners, what—what was all you had yet suffered, when contrasted with the sudden and unexpected misery of this bitter moment Your hearts had gathered in joy and happiness around the bed of that sweet girl, the gleams of whose insanity you had mistaken for the light of reason; and now has hope disappeared, and the darkness of utter despair fallen upon you all for ever.
“I wish to rise,” she proceeded, “and to join the morning prayer; until then I shall only dress in my wrapper: after that I shall dress as becomes me. I know I have nothing to hope either in this world or the next, consequently pride in me is not a sin: the measure of my misery has been filled up; and the only interval, of happiness left me, is that between this and death. Dress me, Agnes.”
The pause arising from the revulsion of feeling, occasioned by the discovery of her settled insanity, was indeed an exemplification of that grief which lies too deep for tears. Sone of them could weep, but they looked upon her and each other, with a silent agony, which far transcended the power of clamorous sorrow.
“Children,” said her father, whose fortitude, considering the nature of this his great affliction, was worthy of better days; “let us neither look upon our beloved one, nor upon each other. There,” said he, pointing upwards, “let us look there. You all know how I loved—how I love her. You all know how she loved me; but I cast—or I strive to cast the burthen, of my affliction upon Him who has borne all for our salvation, and you see I am tearless. Dress the dear child, Agnes, and as she desires it, let her join us at prayer, and may the Lord who has afflicted us, hearken to our supplications!”
Tenderly and with trembling hands did Agnes dress the beloved girl, and when the fair creature, supported by her two sisters, entered the parlor, never was a more divine picture of beauty seen to shine out of that cloud, with which the mysterious hand of of God had enveloped her.
At prayer she knelt as meekly, and with as much apparent devotion as she had ever done in the days of her most rational and earnest piety. But it was woful to see the blighted girl go through all the forms of worship, when it was known that the very habit which actuated her resulted from those virtues, which even insanity could not altogether repress.