She had struggled long; again and again had she resolved that she would not, could not, dare not yield! but vainly she strove to put away the sense of that weary, aching void in her heart—­that longing, yearning desire for her father’s love.

“I cannot bear it! oh, I cannot bear it!” she exclaimed, at length; and seizing a pen, she wrote hastily, and with trembling fingers, while the hot, blinding tears dropped thick and fast upon the paper—­“Papa, come back! oh, come to me, and I will be and do all you ask, all you require.”

But the pen dropped from her fingers, and she bowed her face upon her clasped hands with a cry of bitter anguish.

“How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” The words darted through her mind like a flash of lightning, and then the words of Jesus seemed to come to her ear in solemn tones:  “He that loveth father and mother more than me, is not worthy of me!”

“What have I done?” she cried.  “Has it come to this, that I must choose between my father and my Saviour? and can I give up the love of Jesus? oh, never, never!—­

’Jesus, I my cross have taken All to leave and follow thee.’”

she repeated, half aloud, with clasped hands, and an upward glance of her tearful eyes.  Then, tearing into fragments what she had just written, she fell on her knees and prayed earnestly for pardon, and for strength to resist temptation, and to be “faithful unto death,” that she might “receive the crown of life.”

When Elsie rapped at her aunt’s dressing-room door the next morning, no answer was returned, and after waiting a moment, she softly opened it, and entered, expecting to find her aunt sleeping.  But no, though extended upon a couch, Adelaide was not sleeping, but lay with her face buried in the pillows, sobbing violently.

Elsie’s eyes filled with tears, and softly approaching the mourner, she attempted to soothe her grief with words of gentle, loving sympathy.

“Oh!  Elsie, you cannot feel for me; it is impossible!” exclaimed her aunt passionately. “You have never known sorrow to be compared to mine!  You have never loved, and lost—­you have known none but mere childish griefs.”

“‘The heart knoweth his own bitterness!’” thought Elsie, silent tears stealing down her cheeks, and her breast heaving with emotion.

“Dear Aunt Adelaide,” she said in tremulous tones, “I think I can feel for you.  Have I not known some sorrow?  Is it nothing that I have pined all my life long for a mother’s love? nothing to have been separated from the dear nurse, who had almost supplied her place?  Oh, Aunt Adelaide!” she continued, with a burst of uncontrollable anguish, “is it nothing, nothing to be separated from my beloved father, my dear, only parent, whom I love better than my life—­to be refused even a parting caress—­to live month after month, and year after year under his frown—­and to fear that his love may be lost to me forever?  Oh! papa, papa, will you never, never love me again?” she cried, sinking on her knees, and covering her face with her hands, while the tears trickled fast between the slender fingers.