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Page 7
"Mary, you have identified yourself with us. To my father we must be
as one." She extended her hand, and the next moment they stood in the
reception-room.
The father and uncle were standing with folded arms, looking down into
the muddy street below. He advanced to meet them, holding out a hand
to each. Florence pressed her lips to the one she held, and exclaimed,
"My dear father, how glad I am to see you!"
"Glad to see me! You did not receive my letters then?"
"Yes, I did, but are their contents and pleasure at meeting you
incompatible?"
He made no reply, and then Mary said, in a low, tremulous tone,
"Uncle, you have done me a great injury, and you must make me all the
reparation in your power. You said, in your letter to Florry, that
you did not think I would wish to go with you. Oh, uncle! you do not,
cannot believe me so ungrateful, so devoid of love as to wish, under
any circumstances, to be separated from you. Now ease my heart, and
say I may share your new home. I should be very miserable away from
you."
An expression of pleasure passed over his face, but again the brow
darkened.
"Mary! Florence is my child--my destiny hers, my misfortunes hers; but
I have no right to drag you with me in my fall; to deprive you of the
many advantages that will be afforded, by your uncle's wealth, of the
social position you may one day attain."
"Uncle! uncle! am I not your child by adoption? Have you not loved
and cared for me during long years? Oh! what do I care for wealth--for
what you call a high position in the world? You and Florry are my
world." She threw her arms about his neck, and sobbed, "Take me! oh,
take me with you!"
"If you so earnestly desire it, you shall indeed go with us, my Mary."
And, for the first time in her life, he imprinted a kiss on her brow.
When he departed, it was with a promise to call for them the next
morning, that they might make, with their aunt, some necessary
purchases, and remove to a hotel near the river.
Everything was packed the ensuing day, when Mary suddenly remembered
that her books were still in the recitation-room, and would have gone
for them, but Florence said,
"I will bring up the books, Mary; you are tired and pale with bending
so long over that trunk." And accordingly she went.
Mary threw herself on the couch to rest a moment, and fell into
a reverie of some length, unheeding the flying minutes, when she
recollected that Florence had been absent a long time, and rising,
was about to seek her; just then her cousin entered. A change had come
over her countenance--peace, quiet, happiness reigned supreme. One
hour later, and they had gone from Madame ----'s, never to return
again.
CHAPTER IV
"Time the supreme! Time is eternity,
Pregnant with all eternity can give;
With all that makes archangels smile
Who murders time, he crushes in the birth
A power ethereal."
YOUNG.
A year had passed away. "How paradoxical is the signification of the
term!" How vast, when we consider that each hour hastens the end
of our pilgrimage! How insignificant in comparison with futurity! A
single drop in the boundless deep of eternity! Oh Time! thou greatest
of all anomalies! Friend yet foe, "preserver and yet destroyer!"
Whence art thou, great immemorial? When shall thy wondrous mechanism
be dissolved? When shall the "pall of obscurity" descend on thy
Herculean net-work? Voices of the past echo through thy deserted
temples, and shriek along thy bulwarks--Never, no never!
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