“My poor child,” said Mr. Markland, sadly, yet with great tenderness,—­“would to heaven I could save you from the evil that lies before us!  But I am powerless in the hands of a stern necessity.”

“Oh, father!” sobbed the weeping girl, “if I could bear this change alone, I would be happy.”

“Let us all bear it cheerfully together,” said Mrs. Markland, in a quiet voice, and with restored calmness of spirit.  “Heaven, as Mrs. Willet says, with so much truth, is not without, but within us.  The elements of happiness lie not in external, but in internal things.  I do not think, Edward, even with all we had of good in possession, you have been happy for the past year.  The unsatisfied spirit turned itself away from all that was beautiful in nature—­from all it had sought for as the means of contentment, and sighed for new possessions.  And these would also have lost their charms, had you gained them, and your restless heart still sighed after an ideal good.  It may be—­nay, it must be—­in mercy, that our heavenly Father permitted this natural evil to fall upon us.  The night that approaches will prove, I doubt not, the winter night in which much bread will grow.”

“Comforter!” He spoke the word with emotion.

“And should I not be?” was the almost cheerful answer.  “Those who cannot help should at least speak words of comfort.”

“Words!  They are more than words that you have spoken.  They have in them a substance and a life.  But, Fanny, dear child!” he said, turning to his still grieving daughter—­“your tears distress me.  They pain more deeply than rebuking sentences.  My folly”—­

“Father! exclaimed Fanny—­“it is I—­not you—­that must bear reproach.  A word might have saved all.  Weak, erring child that I was!, Oh! that fatal secret which almost crushed my heart with its burden!  Why did I not listen to the voice of conscience and duty?”

“Let the dead past rest,” said Mr. Markland.  “Your error was light, in comparison with mine.  Had I guarded the approaches to the pleasant land, where innocence and peace had their dwelling-place, the subtle tempter could never have entered.  To mourn over the past but weakens the spirit.”

But of all that passed between these principal members of a family upon whom misfortune had come like a flood, we cannot make a record.  The father’s return soon became known to the rest, and the children’s gladness fell, like a sunny vail, over the sterner features of the scene.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE disaster was complete.  Not a single dollar of all Markland had cast so blindly into the whirling vortex ever came back to him.  Fenwick disappeared from New York, leaving behind conclusive evidence of a dark complicity with the specious Englishman, whose integrity had melted away, like snow in the sunshine, beneath the fire of a strong temptation.  Honourably connected at home, shrewd, intelligent, and enterprising, he had been chosen as the executive agent of a company prepared to make large investments in a scheme that promised large results.  He was deputed to bring the business before a few capitalists on this side of the Atlantic, and with what success has been seen.  His recreancy to the trust reposed in him was the ruin of many.