What remained, however, uniting her most cheerful thoughts with something
serious, and the happiest moments of the present with the dim and solemn
forecast of the future, elevated her nature, not depressed, and made
itself visible rather in tender than in sombre, hues. And it was sweet
when the thought of Madeline and her father came across her, to recur at
once for consolation to that Heaven in which she believed their tears
were dried, and their past sorrows but a forgotten dream! There is,
indeed, a time of life when these reflections make our chief, though a
melancholy, pleasure. As we grow older, and sometimes a hope, sometimes a
friend, is shivered from our path, the thought of an immortality will
press itself forcibly upon us! and there, by little and little, as the
ant piles grain after grain, the garners of a future sustenance, we learn
to carry our hopes, and harvest, as it were, our wishes.

Our cousins then were happy. Happy, for they loved one another entirely;
and on those who do so love, I sometimes think, that, barring physical
pain and extreme poverty, the ills of life fall with but idle malice.
Yes, they were happy in spite of the past, and in defiance of the future.

"I am satisfied then," said my friend,--"and your tale is fairly done!"

And now, Reader, farewell! If, sometimes as thou hast gone with me to
this our parting spot, thou hast suffered thy companion to win the
mastery over thine interest, to flash now on thy convictions, to touch
now thy heart, to guide thy hope, to excite thy anxiety, to gain even
almost to the sources of thy tears--then is there a tie between thee and
me which cannot readily be broken! And when thou hearest the malice that
wrongs affect the candour which should judge, thou wilt be surprised to
feel how unconsciously He who has, even in a tale, once wound himself
around those feelings not daily excited, can find in thy sympathies the