Just one year has passed since their introduction to the reader.  But what a change one year has wrought!  The heart’s bright sunshine rested then on every object.  Woodbine Lodge was then a paradise.  Now, there is scarcely a ray of this warm sunshine.  Yet there had been no bereavement—­no affliction; nothing that we refer to a mysterious Providence.  No,—­but the tempter was admitted.  He came with specious words and deceiving pretences.  He vailed the present good, and magnified the worth of things possessing no power to satisfy the heart.  Too surely has he suceeded in the accomplishment of his evil work.

At the time of the reader’s introduction to Woodbine Lodge, a bright day was going down in beauty; and there was not a pulse in nature that did not beat in unison with the hearts of its happy denizens.  A summer day was again drawing to its close, but sobbing itself away in tears.  And they were in tears also, whose spirits, but a single year gone by, reflected only the light and beauty of nature.

By the window sat the mother and daughter, with oppressed hearts, looking out upon the leaden sky and the misty gusts that swept across the gloomy landscape.  Sad and silent, we have said, they were.  Now and then they gazed into each other’s faces, and the lips quivered as if words were on them.  But each spirit held back the fear by which it was burdened—­and the eyes turned wearily again from the open window.

At last, Fanny’s heavy heart could bear in silence the pressure no longer.  Hiding her face in her mother’s lap, she sobbed out violently.  Repressing her own struggling emotions, Mrs. Markland spoke soothing, hopeful words; and even while she sought to strengthen her daughter’s heart, her own took courage.

“My dear child,” she said, in a voice made even by depressing its tone, “do you not remember that beautiful thought expressed by Mrs. Willet yesterday?  ‘Death,’ said she, ’signifies life; for in every death there is resurrection into a higher and purer life.  This is as true,’ she remarked, ’of our affections, which are but activities of the life, as of the natural life itself.’”

The sobs of the unhappy girl died away.  Her mother continued, in a low, earnest voice, speaking to her own heart as well as to that of her child, for it, too, needed strength and comfort.

“How often have we been told, in our Sabbath instructions, that natural affections cannot be taken to heaven; that they must die, in order that spiritual affections may be born.”

Fanny raised herself up, and said, with slight warmth of manner—­

“Is not my love for you a natural affection for my natural mother?  And must that die before I can enter heaven?”

“May it not be changed into a love of what is good in your mother, instead of remaining only a love of her person?”

“Dear mother!” almost sobbed again the unhappy child,—­clasping eagerly the neck of her parent,—­“it is such a love now!  Oh! if I were as good, and patient, and self-denying as you are!”