Old Sophy was at the window and saw them walking up and down the
garden-alleys. She watched them as her grandfather the savage watched
the figures that moved among the trees when a hostile tribe was lurking
about his mountain.
"There'll be a weddin' in the ol house," she said, "before there's roses
on them bushes ag'in. But it won' be my poor Elsie's weddin', 'n' ol'
Sophy won' be there."
When Helen prayed in the silence of her soul that evening, it was not
that Elsie's life might be spared. She dared not ask that as a favor of
Heaven. What could life be to her but a perpetual anguish, and to those
about her but an ever-present terror? Might she but be so influenced by
divine grace, that what in her was most truly human, most purely
woman-like, should overcome the dark, cold, unmentionable instinct which
had pervaded her being like a subtile poison that was all she could ask,
and the rest she left to a higher wisdom and tenderer love than her own.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE WHITE ASH.
When Helen returned to Elsie's bedside, it was with a new and still
deeper feeling of sympathy, such as the story told by Old Sophy might
well awaken.
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