ago. He could never forget the bride of his
youth, whose image, growing phantomlike with the lapse of years, hovered
over him like a dream while waking and like a reality in dreams. But if
it might be in God's good providence that this desolate life should come
under the influence of human affections once more, what an ecstasy of
renewed existence was in store for him! His life had not all been buried
under that narrow ridge of turf with the white stone at its head. It
seemed so for a while; but it was not and could not and ought not to be
so. His first passion had been a true and pure one; there was no spot or
stain upon it. With all his grief there blended no cruel recollection
of any word or look he would have wished to forget. All those little
differences, such as young married people with any individual flavor in
their characters must have, if they are tolerably mated, had only added
to the music of existence, as the lesser discords admitted into some
perfect symphony, fitly resolved, add richness and strength to the whole
harmonious movement. It was a deep wound that Fate had inflicted on him;
nay, it seemed like a mortal one; but the weapon was clean, and its edge
was smooth. Such wounds must heal with time in healthy natures, whatever
a false sentiment may say, by the wise and beneficent law of our
being. The recollection of a deep and true affection is rather a divine
nourishment for a life to grow strong upon than a poison to destroy it.

Dudley Venner's habitual sadness could not be laid wholly to his early
bereavement. It was partly the result of the long struggle between
natural affection and duty, on one side, and the involuntary tendencies
these had to overcome, on the other,--between hope and fear, so long
in conflict that despair itself would have been like an anodyne, and he
would have slept upon some final catastrophe with the heavy sleep of a
bankrupt after his failure is proclaimed. Alas! some new affection might
perhaps rekindle the fires of youth in his heart; but what power could
calm that haggard terror of the parent which rose with every morning's
sun and watched with every evening star,--what power save alone that of
him who comes bearing the inverted torch, and leaving after him only the
ashes printed with his footsteps?

CHAPTER XXI. THE WIDOW ROWENS GIVES A TEA-PARTY.

There was a good deal of interest felt, as has been said, in the lonely
condition of Dudley Venner in that fine mans