'Dear me! What a disturbance to make about your child!
What, is your child, better than my child? My child is gone out
there, and yours is gone to live with her, to have enough of
every thing, and be treated like a gentleman!' And here she
laughed at Isabel's absurd fears, as she would represent them to
be. 'Yes,' said Isabel, 'your child has gone there, but she is
married, and my boy has gone as a slave, and he is too little to go
so far from his mother. Oh, I must have my child.' And here the
continued laugh of Mrs. G. seemed to Isabel, in this time of
anguish and distress, almost demoniacal. And well it was for Mrs.
Gedney, that, at that time, she could not even dream of the
awful fate awaiting her own beloved daughter, at the hands of
him whom she had chosen as worthy the wealth of her love
and confidence, and in whose society her young heart had
calculated on a happiness, purer and more elevated than was ever
conferred by a kingly crown. But, alas! she was doomed to
disappointment, as we shall relate by and by. At this point,
Isabella earnestly begged of God that he would show to those
about her that He was her helper; and she adds, in narrating,
'And He did; or, if He did not show them, he did me.'



IT IS OFTEN DARKEST JUST BEFORE DAWN.


This homely proverb was illustrated in the case of our sufferer;
for, at the period at which we have arrived in our narrative, to
her the darkness seemed palpable, and the waters of affliction
covered her soul; yet light was about to break in upon her.