CHAPTER XI.

IT is a trite saying, and a very true one, that we do not know the full value of our blessings until we have ceased to possess them. This is true indeed of every circumstance of life of its greatest blessing, health, peculiarly so, and of its minor advantages in their several degrees. But never is this so deeply, so poignantly felt, as on the death of some person to whom we have been closely attached by the ties of kindred or of affection; and the warmer

that affection, the closer those ties, the more poignant will be the pangs that separation and recollection awaken.

In an ordinary case, and in happier circumstances Mrs. Meredith would have felt the death of her father very acutely, but how did reflection now increase her agony! The father who had loved her, cherished her, for long long years, who had indulged her every whim, consulted her every wish, and ever, ever, to her, repressed the violent temper which he cared not, on occasion, to vent on all others— even had she been at his bed-side soothing his last moments, and duteously administering at his dying bed, and receiving humbly, on bended knees, his last and hallowing blessing—even then her grief would have been deep and overwhelming, but it would have been soothed by her parent's dying words, hallowed by his last benediction, embalmed in softening and purifying remembrances. Now, Emily's whole frame quivered with agony-torturing, unrelieved

and as it seemed irremediable agony-for she was an outcast from her father's home, an alien from his affections, a wanderer from his sick bed, an absentee from his dying pillow. And why was all this, because she had opposed his wishes, contemned his authority, broken his express commands. Often, before this time, had her awakening conscience suggested to her that perhaps she had been too hasty, perhaps had she been patient, and waited, the father who loved her so fondly would have withdrawn his opposition, and yielded to her wishesperhaps, probably, nay almost certainly, he would have done so when he found that her prepossession for Mr. Meredith was not a mere whim, a transient fancy, but a permanent feeling in which the happiness of her life was involved. Could any father hold out in such circumstances? Emily felt now, that her's would not have done

So.

Thus had she felt frequently of late,

even when hoping daily and hourly for a reconciliation with him, and anticipatingoh how delightedly did she anticipate the moment of her re-union, when she should confess her fault unreservedly and without attempt at extenuation-and should pray her father on the plea of his love for her, and on that plea alone, to take her back, and to open his heart and his arms to her dear husband. Ah, Emily had no idea until now--none-how many an hour had been beguiled by these day dreams, how present privations had been softened and future anticipations brightened by them.

And now-now-he was dead-the father, ever dearly loved, though in a moment of passionate aberration forsakenthe often forgiving, always loving, always generous father-gone, lost, cold, deaddead, without one act of expiation on her part, one word of forgiveness on his. Now did all his faults and foibles be they what they might, sink into the merest nothingness in comparison with his long enduring

affection and protecting kindness.

Now did her sins of omission towards himtrifling matters perhaps individually, and so regarded by him as well as by herself in her careless days-now did they rise in dread array, bright as scarlet before her eyes, and sound as if with a trumpet tongue in her ears.

But he was gone down into the dust, and now she could make no atonement.

Thankfully, in that dread hour, would she have yielded her whole of life for the power to say to a living parent-" Father, forgive me, for I knew not what I did."

It can excite no surprise that the intense agony of mind which Emily suffered under reflections of which the foregoing pages give but a very faint shadow, should aggravate the circumstances of illness in a very serious degree, and for two or three days Meredith's every thought and hope and feeling were engrossed at her bed-side which he scarcely quitted for a moment. Youth, nature, and a good constitution,