or of her, if you desire it; but I hope time will have its usual effects to restore your tranquillity, and forget the object that now causes your distress."
"Impossible!" exclaimed Ferdinand,—"impossible that I should ever forget my wife, the mother of my children, the choice of my heart! O, why, wherefore am I marked out to be the veriest wretch that crawls the earth, cut off from every endearing tie, and from some fatal unknown cause interdicted from enjoying the only blessing my misfortunes had left me!"
"My dear master," answered the old man, tears in his eyes, "recollect you have still one tie, one blessing, your son; to the dispensations of Providence it is our duty to submit, it avails nothing to inquire into the causes of things beyond our comprehension.
"Had she died, I trust, I should have borne my sorrows like a man; but this strange, incomprehensible mystery———. My child too! a blessing! O, Ernest, may he not live to wring a father's heart with grief, to retaliate
