Catherine had a powerful coadjutor in her good work. It was the sorrow in Carolyn’s heart. And ah, who could sound the depth of that sorrow? Loving as passionately as she had loved! Sinning against that love as cruelly as she had sinned! Punished for her sin as terribly as she was punished! And now ruined and hideous in person, and wrecked and despairing in mind, to whom could she cry in her sharp agony but to God?—her Creator and Father!—Whose arm was strong enough to lift her from that horrible pit but God’s—but God’s? And the All-Powerful, the All-Merciful, was helping her every day. The great strength, the great vitality of her sorrow, was the thought of Archer Clifton. Could she have hoped for a reconciliation with him, however distant, all else might have been borne. But with that death’s head of hers, such joy might never be hoped—ought never to be wished. No, she was as the leper, set apart from human love—at least from conjugal and maternal love—forever and forever! This was hard—this was well nigh intolerable! She would no more grace the saloon with her surpassing loveliness—the pride of her family—the ornament of their house. Her heart would no more swell with exultation, when, on entering the drawing-room, in the full glory of her peerless beauty, she would hear a murmur of admiration pass through the company. No. If she should ever enter a saloon again, she would make a tremendous sensation, truly—but it would be one of astonishment, pity, and perhaps disgust. And that thought was dreadful, dreadful to the proud young belle! But oh! it was as nothing to the feeling that her household gods were broken and ruined forever—that her hopes of domestic happiness were gone forever! For underneath all the pride and vanity and scorn of the young belle had been the woman’s thought, the woman’s hope of the coming long, calm days of wife and mother joy. Yea, as surely as under the burnished satin boddice had beat the heart of flesh! But all these were over now; the proud, vain aspirations of the belle, and the woman’s deeper, purer hopes! Both crushed by one fell blow! All was lost in the world! Nothing was left but Heaven! “If God would take A heart that earth had crushed.” Many are driven by the storms of life to the Heavenly Father’s bosom. It is for this that the tempests of sorrow are sent, and the sooner that Divine sanctuary is sought, the better, for hard and harder will beat the storm until its end is answered. And too often all is lost, or seems lost, before we consent to save ourselves. With Carolyn, all the treasures of her youth were gone,—health and beauty, love and hope. Something like this she breathed to Catherine, in a weak, despairing mood,—for only in a miserably depressed state of mind and body would the proud girl deign to complain.