THE PRODIGAL SON.
BY DUTTON COOK, AUTHOR OF “PAUL FOSTER’S DAUGHTER,” &c
“A lytel misgoyng in the gynning causeth mykel errour in the end.”—Chaucer’s “Testament of Love.”
CHAPTER XXIV. WILFORD’S WIFE.
It was twilight. Though the weather was not cold, a fire was lighted in the pleasant drawing-room of Mr. Fuller’s cottage at Grilling Abbots. The doctor had himself given orders for the fire, finding his daughter shivering and weak. So, close to the hearth, on a low chair, holding her sleeping child in her arms, sat Violet. She had been reading until the daylight had faded, and her eyes ached too much, or were too full of tears, for her to continue. It is needless to say from what book Violet, in her deep affliction, was seeking consolation and support. Faint with suffering, she leant upon the religion which had been the treasured possession of her whole life, and found the strength to endure, and the patience and comfort of which her want was so immediate. By the waning light she had read yet once again the golden words of invitation to the oppressed:—“Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest;” and already her burthen seemed something lightened. The first pangs of her agony had passed away. She had recovered a little from the primal overwhelming effects of the blow which had descended upon her with a violence and a suddenness alike frightful—which, while it had lacerated her poor heart, had deranged her intellect and menaced even her life. This excess of acute suffering had gone, and she had now acquired calmness and strength to support a pain which, if less violent in its visitation, was yet hardly less certain and lasting. Still now she could weep and pray. At first even these had seemed not possible to her. She wept and prayed, hugging her child to her heart.
It was painful to look upon her now—remembering what she had been—how radiantly happy so short a time back, as a wife, as a mother. In what vulnerable places had the poor soul been stricken! A wife no longer. A mother—when the word seemed to convey reproach and disgrace. How white she was—as marble—with a strange rigidity about her lineaments—as though they had