How often should I be ready to sink in despair," and Agnes's lips
quivered with emotion, "were it not that I am permitted to look forward
to that inheritance which is incorruptible and undefiled, and which
shall prove an abundant recompense for those 'light afflictions which
are but for a moment.'"

"But you," said Arthur, half inquiringly, "are, I trust, a stranger to
those afflictions.

'Rose-leaved from the cold,
And meant, verily, to hold
Life's pure pleasures manifold.'"

"My childhood and youth has, indeed, passed amid flowers and sunshine,"
was the reply; "and if the future appears now to point to a more gloomy
and thornier path, I will not repine to tread it, for

'Here little, and hereafter much,
Is true from age to age.'"

Arthur, as he was about making a reply, was interrupted by his sister,
who came to request Agnes to play for her a favorite tune, and their
conversation, with the exception of an occasional word now and then, was
ended for that evening.




CHAPTER V.