And what was the state of her heart towards her heavenly Father? Alas! could the thoughts and feelings of the unhappy Flora have been written down, she would have started and trembled to see how near the breathings of a repining, gloomy spirit approached to blasphemy! She deemed herself hardly, unmercifully dealt with. She marvelled why she had been raised for a moment to the very pinnacle of human felicity, to be dashed down into the deep gulf of despair! Was the Almighty indeed a pitying Father? Had He led her into the paths of peace? Had He not rather filled her cup with bitterness, and withered her soul with disappointment? Nay, was it not religion that lay at the root of all her misery? Were not the conscientious misgivings of her mother as the worm that had destroyed the gourd that she delighted in? Had Mrs. Vernon’s views been less strict and puritanical--less _bigoted_, as Flora called them, in the anguish of her soul--would not her daughter have been the happiest of women?--would not she herself have been the proudest of mothers? Such thoughts were sinful, marked with the deepest stain of ingratitude; yet Flora indulged in them freely. She almost accused Providence in secret of having exposed her to trials beyond what she could bear; unmindful of the fact that she had herself, in impatience of petty annoyances, chosen the path which, however flowery at first, she had found to be strewn with sharp thorns. If she was conscious that her faith was growing weak, and her love towards God becoming cold, she laid the blame upon the cruel circumstances of the position in which the Almighty had placed her. She had loved and served the Lord--at least so she deemed--when she was happy; but when His hand lay so heavy upon her, she was ready to forget all past mercies, all present blessings, all bright hopes of a blissful future. With Jonah her spirit exclaimed, "I do well to be angry:" with Elijah, "It is enough; take away my life!" Impatient to throw down the burden which her unchastened will refused to sustain, she longed, almost prayed, for death--little deeming in her present state how unfit she was to die. The sun of trial was now indeed glowing with intense and burning heat on the seed which had been sown in rocky ground; the plant which had shown in the world’s eye so fair, unwatered by grace, having no root in itself, in the time of temptation withered away.