Over that cross, emblematic of the Lamb who was slain that we might live, was shed tears from a widow’s heart; but those tears were not of mourning for the departed, for through her who was made but a little lower than the angels, those tears had been turned into joy.  The child who had ever walked in that narrow way, as if it were the only path in which the children of earth might tread, had taught her bereaved mother, that those precious words from the book of life, which she had ever recognized, but had not strength to cling thereto in the hour of trial, were truly Christ’s words of tenderness; she could now smile upon the chastening rod.  Those dying words, as it were of him who had gone, were as balm to the heart of Mrs. Grosvenor and the Sea-flower, for what could be more dreadful than that they should never learn of his last moments?  But to Harry, who had been just upon the point of asking for his father, it was as the dark funeral pall to his soul, and he staggered to a chair.

“Where is my father?” he asked, in a hollow voice.

“In Heaven!” was the response of the Sea-flower.

There was silence in that house.  Sorrow, which had reigned for a time around that hearthstone, still lingered, striving to supersede the joy which must go hand in hand with purity; but its icy touch was to be of gentler mien, its cold, cold breath mingling with that of more genial spheres, helping to swell the—­“Father, thy will be done.”  This was a dreadful announcement to Harry, a stroke which he was not prepared to receive; and now did the past come to his remembrance with sickening frenzy.  That terrific night!—­he had, at the peril of his life, implored that heartless being to listen to the stranger’s cry of distress, to stretch out to him the hand of brotherly love; and that cry for help was now sounding in his ear with renewed freshness, for it was from his own loved father!

“Oh, what an undutiful son I have been!” cried Harry; “had I known then what I know now! and yet, the fiend would not have turned a hand, had it been his own father!  Thank God, I have his forgiveness for disobeying his last commands! ’t is the one great lesson of my life, and should I live a hundred years, I will never deviate from what I think would have been my parent’s wishes.”

“Natalie!”—­the Sea-flower gazed upon that name, the name of her father’s choice,—­a simple word, but Oh, what volumes did it speak! there seemed to be a very sacredness hanging about the tone.  As time sped onward, leaving far behind the past, but not burying it, the sweet, child-like Sea-flower was gradually putting on the gentle, mystic form of Natalie; and though the name had become familiar to other ears, to her its impress was as when she reverently looked upon that cross of Christ, at the foot of which was traced that which she could not but associate therewith.  The depth of her dreamy eyes spoke not only of him who had left them, but they told of the soul’s instinct in regard to that which was as yet unrevealed.