Oh, ye children of affectionate parents! beware how you crush the hearts that have “nourished and cherished” you as only parents’ hearts can do!  God will smite the undutiful child with a curse!  Bear and forbear, even if the commands of those appointed over you should seem to be unjust.  Remember their labor, and toil and suffering in your behalf, and spare, oh! spare them in their old age, when their bodies are ripening for the grave, and their spirits for the skies.  Let not their gray hairs go down to the chambers of the dead in sorrow, nor their failing strength be suddenly brought low by the anguish you have inflicted upon their spirits; but spare them as you would be spared!

Several minutes elapsed before Mr. Mandeville could collect his scattered and stunned thoughts together.  The blow was so sudden, the shock so terrible, they almost prostrated him.  He walked up and down the room, with paleness on his cheeks, and a load in his bosom.  The only evidence he manifested of the great grief that was consuming him was an occasional groan, which came up from the great deep of his heart, as though they were forced out by some unseen or over-mastering power.  He was like the tall oak of the forest when blasted by the fiery thunderbolt!  What a sad picture!

At length the exclamation burst forth from his lips, as though the overcharged heart would relieve itself in words: 

“Oh, my God, pity me!” and he clasped his hands, and pressed them upon his laboring breast, as if to still its tumult.  Then came another groan, accompanied by a deep, soul-desponding “Oh!”

And the strong man was calm.  But such a calmness!  It seemed as if years of suffering had stamped their impress upon his brow, and in his face, in those brief moments of agony!  Ah, how true it is, that the soul may grow old in a day!

After a time he again took up the letters and perused them.

“How artful!” he mused to himself, as he read the one to Eveline.  “Every word is written with studied care, and every sentence conceals a temptation.  Then the last, the postscript, so much to tell her, to excite her curiosity, as well as operate upon her affections!—­The villain!  But she ought not to have yielded to his solicitations; even in her great love I can find no adequate excuse for her.  She knew he was accused of a crime, and pledged me her solemn word that she would never see him until the accusation was proved false.  But she is gone—­gone!  Oh, what desolation in the thought!  And I am left alone and forsaken in my woe!  Ungrateful child! may heaven reward you as you have dealt by me!  No, no, God forbid!  Heaven be merciful to her!  But on him, on the miscreant who is at the bottom of all this undutiful conduct, of all the pain it inflicts, may the fierce lightning of God’s vengeance descend in burning wrath, and as a consuming fire!  God of heaven! thou who beholdest the anguish of a stricken parent’s heart, smite him with a curse; aye, pour out upon his forsaken head the vials of thy hot anger!  Give him no rest to his soul, day or night, until the hour of reckoning shall come!”