She embraced each in turn, holding them to her heart with a whispered word or two of tender mother love. "God bless you, my dear, dear children! He will be a father to the fatherless and never leave nor forsake you." Violet dared not trust herself to speak. Elsie only murmured, "Dear, dearest mamma!" and Edward, "Darling, precious mother, don't grieve too sorely." "The consolations of God are not small! my dear son," was all she said in reply, and they withdrew softly and silently as they had come. The next morning and each following day they were all allowed a few moments with her, until four days had passed. On the fifth, as we have said, she came down to the breakfast room leaning on her father's arm. As they neared the door she paused, trembling like a leaf, and turning to him a white, anguished face. He knew what it meant. She had not been in that room, had not taken her place at that table, since the morning of the day on which her husband was taken ill. He was with her then, in apparently perfect health; now--the places which had known him on earth would know him no more forever. Her head dropped on her father's shoulder, a low moan escaping her pale lips. "Dear child," he said, drawing her closer to him, and tenderly kissing her brow, "think how perfectly happy, how blest he is. You would not call him back?" "Oh no, no!" came from the quivering lips. "'The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak!'" "Lean on your strong Saviour," he said, "and His grace will be sufficient for you." She sent up a silent petition, then lifting her head, "I can bear it now--He will help me," she said, and suffered him to lead her in. Her children gathered about her with a joy that was as a cordial to her fainting spirit; their love was very sweet. But how her heart yearned over them because they were fatherless; all the more so that she found her father's love so precious and sustaining in this time of sorrow and bereavement. He led her to her accustomed seat, bent over her with a whispered word of love and encouragement, then took the one opposite--once her husband's, now his no more. Perhaps it was not quite so hard as to have seen it empty, but it cost a heroic effort to restrain a burst of anguish. CHAPTER VI. "Happy he With such a mother! faith in womankind Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high Comes easy to him, and though he trip and fall He shall not blind his soul with clay." --_Tennyson._ Life at Ion moved on in its accustomed quiet course, Mr. Travilla's removal seeming, to outsiders, to have made very little change except that Mr. and Mrs. Dinsmore now took up their abode there for the greater part of the time, leaving the younger Horace and his wife in charge at the Oaks. An arrangement for which Elsie was very thankful, for her father's presence and his love were as balm to her wounded spirit.