I have been
taught would fade from my memory, but for thee!"

CHAPTER XLIV.

A FEW weeks later, and "Lawn Cottage" was the scene of an event
which made the hearts of its inmates glad even to tears. That event
was the marriage of Fanny. From the time of her betrothment to Mr.
Willet, a new life seemed born in her spirit and a new beauty
stamped upon her countenance. All around her was diffused the
heart's warm sunshine. As if from a long, bewildering, painful
dream, she had awakened to find the morning breaking in serene
beauty, and loving arms gathered protectingly around her. The
desolating tempest had swept by; and so brilliant was the sunshine,
and so clear the bending azure, that night and storms were both
forgotten.

Old Mr. Allison was one of the few guests, outside of the families,
who were present at the nuptial ceremonies. The bride--in years, if
not in heart-experience, yet too young to enter upon the high duties
to which she had solemnly pledged herself--looked the embodied image
of purity and loveliness.

"Let me congratulate you," said the old man, sitting down beside Mr.
Markland, and grasping his hand, after the beautiful and impressive
ceremony was over and the husband's lips had touched the lips of his
bride and wife. "And mine is no ordinary congratulation, that goes
scarcely deeper than words, for I see in this marriage the beginning
of a true marriage; and in these external bonds, the image of those
truer spiritual bonds which are to unite them in eternal oneness."

"What an escape she made!" responded the father, a shudder running
through his frame, as there arose before him, at that instant, a
clear recollection of the past, and of his own strange, consenting
blindness.

"The danger was fearful," replied Mr. Allison, who understood the
meaning of the words which had just been uttered. "But it is past
now."

"Yes, thanks to the infinite wisdom that leads us back into right
paths. Oh! what a life of unimagined wretchedness would have fallen
to her lot, if all my plans and hopes had been accomplished! Do you
know, Mr. Allison, that I have compared my insane purposes in the
past to that of those men of old who made their children pass
through the fire to Moloch? I set up an idol--a bloody Moloch--and
was about sacrificing to it my child!"

"There is One who sits above the blinding vapours of human passion,
and sees all ends from the beginning; One who loves us with an
infinite tend