CHAPTER XXII.

“Alice,” said Mrs. Weston, as they sat together one morning, before it was time to dress for dinner, “if you choose, I will read to you the last part of Cousin Janet’s letter.  You know, my daughter, of Walter’s gay course in Richmond, and it is as I always feared.  There is a tendency to recklessness and dissipation in Walter’s disposition.  With what a spirit of deep thankfulness you should review the last few months of your life!  I have sometimes feared I was unjust to Walter.  My regret at the attachment for him which you felt at one time, became a personal dislike, which I acknowledge, I was wrong to yield to; but I think we both acted naturally, circumstanced as we were.  Dear as you are to me, I would rather see you dead than the victim of an unhappy marriage.  Love is not blind, as many say.  I believe the stronger one’s love is, the more palpable the errors of its object.  It was so with me, and it would be so with you.  That you have conquered this attachment is the crowning blessing of my life, even should you choose never to consummate your engagement with Arthur.  I will, at least, thank God that you are not the wife of a man whose violent passions, even as a child, could not be controlled, and who is destitute of a spark of religious principle.  I will now read you what Cousin Janet says.

“’I have received a long letter from Mr. C., the Episcopal clergyman in Richmond, in answer to mine, inquiring of Walter.  All that I feared is true.  Walter is not only gay, but dissipated.  Mr. C. says he has called to see him repeatedly, and invited him to his house, and has done all that he could to interest him in those pleasures that are innocent and ennobling; but, alas! it is difficult to lay aside the wine cup, when its intoxicating touch is familiar to the lips, and so of the other forbidden pleasures of life.  To one of Walter’s temperament there is two-fold danger.  Walter is gambling, too, and bets high; he will, of course, be a prey to the more experienced ones, who will take advantage of his youth and generosity to rob him.  For, is a professed gambler better than a common thief?

“’It is needless for me to say, I have shed many tears over this letter.  Tears are for the living, and I expect to shed them while I wear this garment of mortality.  Can it be that in this case the wise Creator will visit the sins of the father upon the child?  Are are all my tears and prayers to fail?  I cannot think so, while He reigns in heaven in the same body with which He suffered on earth.  In the very hand that holds the sceptre is the print of the nails; under the royal crown that encircles His brow, can still be traced the marks of the thorns.  He is surely, then, touched with a feeling of our infirmities, and He will in the end, bring home this child of my love and my adoption.  I often say to myself, could I see Alice and Arthur and