Page:Orange Grove.djvu/315

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CHAPTER XXVIII.

"Holy and fervent love! had earth but rest
For thee and thine, this world were all too fair!
How could we thence be weaned to die without despair?"


Rosalind found much time to devote to her studies during the winter, in which, being occasionally assisted by her husband, she found a charm that dispelled many of those vain queries she was so prone to enter into. That intellect was finding rest at last, for it was a rest to be satiated in its demands, no matter how much labor it cost the brain to follow that untiring will. Domestic duties might press upon her, or benevolent enterprises require her assistance, but nothing could usurp the paramount claims of her nature upon that science which, more than aught else, revealed the mystery of the world's creation, and reconciled her to the decree which has appointed unto all men to suffer, since into all is breathed a spark of the divine life whose omnipotent genius called all these worlds into existence, and which will still exist when they shall cease to be. The sufferings of a few short years were swallowed up in the presence of the glorious eternity toward which all were hastening, and which was already beginning to dawn upon her as she threaded the sublime wonders so closely connecting the divine law