"But my father mourned. There was a shadow on his manly brow, which I had never seen before. I was, now, his only child, the representative of his once beloved Rosalie, and the pure, fond love of his early years revived again in me. I look back upon those two months, when I basked in the sunshine of parental tenderness for the first, the _only_ time, as a portion of my life most dear and holy. I sighed when I thought of the years when we had been comparatively so far apart, and my heart grew to his with tender adhesiveness and growing love. The affections, which my worldly step-mother had chilled and repressed, and which the death of his other children had blighted, were now all mine, renovated and warmed. "Oh, Gabriella! very precious is a father's love. It is an emblem of the love of God for the dependent beings he has created; so kind, so protecting, so strong, and yet so tender! Would to God, my poor, defrauded child, you could have known what this God-resembling love is,--but your orphanage has been the most sad, the most dreary,--the most unhallowed. Almighty Father of the universe, have mercy on my child! Protect and bless her when this wasting, broken heart no longer beats; when the frail shield of a mother's love is taken from her, and she is left _alone_--_alone_--_alone_. Oh! my God, have pity--have pity! Forsake her not!" The paper was blistered with the tears of the writer. I dropped it on the grave, unable to go on. I cast myself on the grass-covered mould, and pressed it to my bosom, as if there was vitality in the cold clods. "Oh, my mother!" I exclaimed, and strange and dreary sounded my voice in that breathing stillness. "Has God heard thy prayers? Will he hear the cries of the fatherless? Will he have pity on my forsaken youth?" I would have given worlds to have realized that this mighty God was near; that he indeed cared with a father's love for the orphan mourner, committed in faith to his all-embracing arms. But I still worshipped him as far-off, enthroned on high, in the heaven of heavens, which cannot contain the full glory of his presence. I saw him on the burning mountain, in the midst of thunder and lightning and smoke,--a God of consuming fire, before whose breath earthly joys and hopes withered and dried, like blossoms cast into the furnace. But did not God once hide his face of love from his own begotten Son? And shall not the _eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani_ of the forsaken heart sometimes ascend amid the woes and trials and wrongs of life, from the great mountain of human misery, the smoking Sinai, whose clouded summit quakes with the footsteps of Deity? CHAPTER XXIII. I again resumed the manuscript, trembling for the revelations which it might make.