e even when most severe with me, you did what at the time you
deemed your duty, and believed to be for my good."

"Yes, that is true, my dear, forgiving child! and yet I can never think of
the suffering you endured during the summer that succeeded the Christmas
we have been talking of, without keen remorse."

"Yet, long before the next Christmas came I was happier than ever," she
said, looking up into his face with a smile full of filial love. "It was
the first in our own dear home at the Oaks, you remember, papa. You gave
me a lovely set of pearls--necklace and bracelets--and this," taking up a
pearl ring, "was Edward's gift. Mr. Travilla he was to me then, and no
thought of one day becoming his wife even so much as entered my head. But
years afterward he told me he had it in his mind even then; had already
resolved to wait till I grew up and win me for his wife if he could."

"Yes, he told me after you were grown and he had offered himself, that it
had been love at first sight with him, little child that you were when he
first made your acquaintance. That surprised me, though less than the
discovery that you fancied one so many years your senior."

"But so good, so noble, so lovable!" she said. "Surely, it was not half so
strange, papa, as that he should fancy a foolish young thing such as I was
then; not meaning that I am yet very greatly improved," she added, with a
half tearful smile.

"I am fully satisfied with you just as you are," he said, bending down
over her and touching his lips two or three times to her forehead, "My
darling, my first-born and best-beloved child! no words can express the
love and tenderness I feel for you, or my pity for the grief which is
beyond my power to relieve."

"Dear papa, your sympathy is very sweet," she said in tremulous tones,
"very, very sweet in itself, and it helps me to a fuller realization of
the depth of meaning in those sweet words, 'Like as a father pitieth his
children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.'"

"You cannot be wholly miserable while that precious love and pity are
yours, my dear child, even if all earthly loves should be taken from you,
which may God forbid should ever happen."

"No, papa; dearly as I loved my husband, I am happy in that divine love
still mine, though parted from him; and dearly as I love you and my
children, I know that were you all taken from me, I could still rejoice in
the love of Him who died for me, and who has said, 'I am