Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing

From the opening

Do you think that, as he read that summons, he hesitated as to whether he should obey it? If his bishopric had been sacrificed by it, he would have gone; if disgrace and danger had attended his footsteps, he would have obeyed her bidding! The love which had been strengthening in ten long years of loneliness and bereavement, was not now to stop, to question or to fear.

"Accompany me, dear mother, this evening; I have made an engagement for you," he said, as he went, she hanging on his arm, to the cathedral for afternoon service.

"Willingly, my son," was the instant answer, and Duncan kept her to her word.

But it was with wondering, with surprise that she did not attempt to conceal, and with questions which were satisfied with no definite reply, that Mrs. Melville found herself standing with her son in an obscure corner of the opera-house that night. Soon all her expressions of astonishment were hushed, but by another cause than the mysterious inattention of her son: a queenly woman appeared upon the stage; she lifted her voice, and sobbed the mournful wail which opens the first scene in----.

For years there had not been such a sensation created among the frequenters of that place, as now, by the appearance of this stranger. The wild, singular style of her beauty made an impression that was heightened by every movement of her graceful figure, every tone of her rich melodious voice. She seemed for the time the very embodiment of the sorrow to which she gave an expression, and the effect was a complete triumph.

Mary Melville and her son gazed on the debutante--they had no word, no look for each other: for they recognised in her voice the tones of a grief of which long ago they heard the prelude--and every note found its echo in the bishop's inmost heart.

A short sample. Read the whole book

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