carcely ever caused her pain, still
less anxiety. Now indeed solicitude was hers, for it was evident, alas!
too evident, that Emmeline's affections were unalterably engaged; that
this was not the mere fervour of the moment, a passion that would pass
away with the object, but one that Mrs. Hamilton felt forebodingly would
still continue to exist. Emmeline's was not a disposition to throw off
feelings such as these lightly and easily. Often had her mother inwardly
trembled when she thought of such a sentiment influencing her Emmeline,
and now the dreaded moment had come. How was she to act? She could not
consent to an union such as this would be. Few mothers possessed less
ambition than Mrs. Hamilton, few were so indulgent, so devoted to her
children, but to comply with the poor girl's feverish wishes would be
indeed but folly. Arthur had engaged himself to remain with Lord Louis
Lyle during the period of his residence in Germany, which was at that
time arranged to be three years. The future to young Myrvin must, she
knew, be a blank; years would in all probability elapse ere he could
obtain an advantageous living and means adequate to support a wife and
family; and would it not be greater cruelty to bid Emmeline live on in
lingering and sickening hope, than at once to appeal to her reason, and
entreat her, by the affection she bore her parents, to achieve this
painful conquest of herself, as their consent could not be given. They
felt sad, indeed, thus to add to the suffering of their afflicted child,
yet it was the better way, for had they promised to consent that when he
could support her she should be his own, it might indeed bring relief
for the moment, but it would be but the commencement of a life of
misery; her youth would fade away in that sickening anguish of hope
deferred, more bitter because more lingering than the absolute
infliction of brief though certain suffering. The hearts of both parents
grieved as they thought on all she had endured, and for a brief period
must still endure, but their path of duty once made clear, they swerved
not from it, however it might pain themselves.

Mrs. Hamilton was right. Emmeline's solitary moments were not spent in
vain repinings; she struggled to compose her thoughts, to cast the
burden of her sorrows upon Him, who in love and mercy had ordained them;
and she did so with that pure, that simple, beautiful faith so
peculiarly her own, and a calm at length stole over her wear