t of all his love for her, had by his
pride and waywardness caused her many an anxious hour and many an aching
heart, yet she clung to him with an affection whose yearning depth no
tongue can utter. And now, still young, she had died suddenly, and left
him on the threshold of dangerous youth almost without a friend in the
wide world; had passed, with a silence which could never more be broken,
into the eternal world; had left him, whom she loved with such intensity
of unspeakable affection, without a word, without a look, without a sign
of farewell. She had passed away in a moment to the far-off untroubled
shore, whence waving hands cannot be seen, and no sounds of farewell
voices heard. How must that life expand in the unconceived glory of
that new dawn--the life which on earth so little sunshine visited!

She was one of the most sweet, the most pure, the most unselfish, the
most beautifully blameless of all God's children; and she had lived in
hardship, in neglect, in anxiety, in calumny; she had lived among those
mean and wretched villagers: an angel was among them, and they knew it
not; she had tasted no other drink but the bitter waters of affliction;
no hope had brightened, no love sustained, her earthly course. And now
her young orphan son, his heart dead within him for anguish, his
conscience tortured by remorse, was kneeling in that agony which no weak
words can paint, was kneeling for the last time, _too late_, beside her
corpse.

Truly life is a mystery, which the mind of man cannot fathom till the
glory of eternal truth enlighten it!

CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT.

THE STUPOR BROKEN.

The white stone, unfractured, ranks as most precious;
The blue lily, unblemished, emits the finest fragrance;
The heart, when it is harassed, finds no place of rest;
The mind, in the midst of bitterness, thinks only of grief.

_The Sorrows of Han, a Chinese Tragedy_.

After these days Kenrick returned to Saint Winifred's, as he supposed,
for the last time. His guardian, a stiff, unsympathising man, had
informed him, that as his mother's annuity ceased with her life, there
was very little left to support him. The sale, however, of the house at
Fuzby, and the scholarship which he had just won, would serve to
maintain him for a few years, and meanwhile his guardian would endeavour
to secure for him a place in some merchant's office, where gradually he
would be able to earn a livelihood.

It was a very differe