“Elinor wept while she read, but that was all. She wept from physical emotion, not from mental conviction; nor is there such an induration of heart caused by any other power, as by that of the passion which seems to soften it most. She answered the letter, however, and the effort scarce cost her less than it did her decrepid and dying relative. She acknowledged her dereliction of all religious feeling, and bewailed it--the more, she added with painful sincerity, because I _feel my grief is not sincere_. “Oh, my God!” she continued, “you who have clothed my heart with such burning energies--you who have given to it a power of loving so intense, so devoted, so concentrated--you have not given it in vain;--no, in some happier world, or perhaps even in this, when this “tyranny is overpast,” you will fill my heart with an image worthier than him whom I once believed your image on earth. The stars, though their light appears so dim and distant to us, were not lit by the Almighty hand in vain. Their glorious light burns for remote and happier worlds; and the beam of religion that glows so feebly to eyes almost blind with earthly tears, may be rekindled when a broken heart has been my passport to a place of rest. * * * * * * * * “Do not think me, dear aunt, deserted by all hope of religion, even though I have lost the sense of it. Was it not said by unerring lips to a sinner, that her transgressions were forgiven because she _loved much_? And does not this capacity of love prove that it will one day be more worthily filled, and more happily employed. * * * * * * “Miserable wretch that I am! At this moment, a voice from the bottom of my heart asks me “_Whom_ hast thou loved so much? Was it man or God, that thou darest to compare thyself with her who knelt and wept--not before a mortal idol, but at the feet of an incarnate divinity?” * * * * * * “It may yet befall, that the ark which has floated through the waste of waters may find its resting-place, and the trembling inmate debark on the shores of an unknown but purer world.” * * * * * * * * CHAPTER XXXI. There is an oak beside the froth-clad pool, Where in old time, as I have often heard, A woman desperate, a wretch like me, Ended her woes!--Her woes were not like mine! * * * * * ----------------Ronan will know; When he beholds me floating on the stream, His heart will tell him why Rivine died! HOME’S FATAL DISCOVERY. “The increasing decline of Elinor’s health was marked by all the family; the very servant who stood behind her chair looked sadder every day--even Margaret began to repent of the invitation she had given her to the Castle.